Could Someone Help Me Setup Backup Copy Jobs for Multiple Sites Using Veeam Backup & Replication?

[Autumn44]

Hello everyone

I hope you are well. I am new to veeam backup and replication and would appreciate some help creating backup copy activities for our system; which includes several remote sites. We recently acquired Veeam as our primary backup system; and while I successfully set up the initial backup processes; I am having some issues with the backup copy jobs; especially when dealing with various site logistics.

This is our headquarters; where the veeam backup & replication server is installed. We have approximately 50 VMs that are vital to our business.

We have three remote sites; each with its own set of VMs; which range from 10 to 20. Each site has a local backup repository that manages its own daily backups.

All sites are linked by a Wide Area Network and we have a central repository at our headquarters where we aim to keep backup copies for all remote locations.

The capacity of the WAN links connecting outlying sites to head quarters is limited. I have heard about WAN acceleration in Veeam, but I'm not sure how to best configure it such that backup copy jobs don't overload our links during business hours.

I'm not sure how to set the retention policies for backup copy tasks that involve several sites. Should I have distinct retention policies for each site, or is it more effective to manage this centrally?

I'm having trouble scheduling backup copy jobs so that they run during off-peak hours and don't overlap with the primary backup operations. Any suggestions about how to appropriately stagger these jobs; especially when dealing with multiple sites, would be very appreciated.

I am looking for any best practices or recommendations for handling backup copy processes across several sites. Are there any typical mistakes and optimizations I should look at to increase efficiency and reliability?

How do I appropriately arrange WAN acceleration for backup copy processes in order to maximize the limited bandwidth between sites? Are there any specific settings that have worked well in similar situations?

What is the best way to establish retention policies when working with several distant sites? Should I tailor these policies separately or take a more cohesive approach?

How do you generally schedule backup copy tasks in a multi-site system so that they do not interfere with primary backups? Are there any special tactics or tools you employ to monitor and manage job schedules?

If you have managed a similar arrangement before, do you have any general tips or best practices to share? Any suggestions for ensuring that backup copy jobs operate smoothly over the WAN?

Also I explored some topics related to this schedule multiple backupdevops Jobs in VAW 2.0 RTM but I did not get the sufficient solution of my query so I would really want to get some help from a more experienced person

Thank you in advance for your help.

I look forward to any suggestions or insights you can offer. I've been astonished by the abundance of information in this group, and I'm excited to learn from your experiences.

[david.domask]

Hi Autumn, welcome to the forums.

Absolutely can help on a few of these items, but spoiler warning: a lot of this will come down to your organizational needs and requirements for backups and just what is possible with the environmental factors (amount of data, connection speed, etc) that your environment can sustain. Similarly, sorry there will be a bit of documentation for you to parse through, but it should give you the information you need to make more informed decisions.

1.The capacity of the WAN links connecting outlying sites to head quarters is limited. I have heard about WAN acceleration in Veeam, but I'm not sure how to best configure it such that backup copy jobs don't overload our links during business hours.

WAN Accelerators main goal is to ensure that you're sending as little data as is required over the network in order to avoid saturating the link. It's fairly straight forward, and the deployment strategies are documented in the User Guide and in our Best Practices Guide. Sizing the WAN accelerator disk space can seem daunting at first, but read through the articles a bit and write out the math just as it shows in the examples, that will give you a good estimate on sizing the WAN accels. While you can run WAN accelerators on servers hosting other roles (Proxy, Repository), please keep in mind that WAN Accelerators are fairly memory intensive, so a dedicated server is often a good idea.

Keep in mind, you can control the bandwidth flow even further with Network Traffic Throttling. This combined with the Backup Copy Window will help ensure you're not saturating the bandwidth and respecting your production work hourss

2. I'm not sure how to set the retention policies for backup copy tasks that involve several sites. Should I have distinct retention policies for each site, or is it more effective to manage this centrally?

Largely a matter of preference. A unified retention policy means it's a bit easier to spot if something goes amiss with the Backup Copy job, but really retention is best defined as you need it. By default, Backup Copy will try to use Synthetic Fulls to create GFS restore points (read: archival) -- this is important because with Synthetic Full, instead of transferring the entire size of a Full backup over the network, the Full is created locally on the target repository by merging necessary data from previous restore points into a fresh full backup, thus removing the need for a huge transfer across limited networks.

But ultimately retention is a matter of preference, and you should discuss with your team your long-term archival requirements and determine the amount of restore points you can keep based on your available storage. Our calculators here can help with estimating storage usage based on your workloads: https://www.veeam.com/calculators/

3. How do I appropriately arrange WAN acceleration for backup copy processes in order to maximize the limited bandwidth between sites? Are there any specific settings that have worked well in similar situations?

Review the Best Practices and Deployment links I linked in the answer to question 1 above -- this discusses placement a bit, and again, placement depends a lot on your specific needs.

Do consider that if Object Storage is a consideration for your organization, this can simplify your centralization of backup copies as well and remove the concern about saturating the links between sites by instead just offloading to an S3 provider. You can do Direct to Object Storage Backup Copies, for example to satisfy the 3-2-1 rule.

There's quite a bit above here, so will stop and give you a chance to work through it, but there are a lot of ways to handle this based on your available resources and your organizational needs.

Do consider reaching out to your Veeam Sales Representative if you have further questions on design and deployment, or want a more in-depth walk through of the features that can help get you consistent and stable Backup Copies with the resources available in your environment.