Design Topology for VEEAM / Backup Exec Environment

[cffit]

I'm asking for advice on the best configuration design for our environment. We want to keep Backup Exec to backup the VEEAM files to tape. I'm not sure of the best method to integrate VEEAM in, so any advice would be appreciated.

Current Setup:
Physical Server running Backup Exec. This server has local disk (via iSCSI SAN) for backup to disk, then writes to tape via a connected SAS Tape Library. No VEEAM backups.

My Ideas of Possible Future Scenarios:
1. Setup VEEAM backup server as a VM. Attach a very large datastore to the VM, and run VEEAM backups to this VMFS storage. Then use physical BE server to backup the files from the VEEAM server as a traditional backup.

2. Setup VEEAM backup server as a VM. Share out a large backup folder on the physical BE server, and run backups from VEEAM to save to that shared folder. Physical BE server saves local disk’s VEEAM backup files to tape.

3. Install VEEAM on the same physical server as BE. Run VEEAM backup from the physical server and save files locally, then use BE to back these files up to tape.

Tech support said that it is best practice to have the VEEAM backup server as a VM. We are ordering an iSCSI SAN just for backup storage, and I’m just not sure which option is the best practice, most efficient and most safe to configure. There might well be a better solution than what I have listed above. We basically have a virtual environment, a physical BE server, and an iSCSI SAN to backup to disk with. Given those three things, what’s our best configuration to do VEEAM backups and then backup to tape?

[iroche]

I run option 3 and it works perfectly . I am running a Dell R710 and the local storage is an MD3000 & 1000 (17TB of storage) connected via SAS. This production VMware storage layer is running on Dell Equallogic PS6xxx moudles. We use "Direct SAN access" for the Veeam backup jobs with two 1GB links connected into the storage network. We then have scripted BE jobs which kick in when the Veeam jobs complete. Our R710 is loaded with 32GB of RAM and Intel Xeon E5620 CPUs x 2.

Runs a treat.

[cffit]

Thanks for the response. Do you have any VEEAM services running in a VM, or is everything running on the physcial BE server? Can you still boot backed up VMs on the physical server's SAS attached storage through VMWare since VMWare doesn't know about the storage the backups are on?

[foggy]

Chris, you can also search this forum for "Backup Exec" to see a number of existing discussions where other Veeam customers describe similar scenarios. This one is the most popular, I think: Best Practice for putting Veeam Backups on Tape? Thanks.

[cffit]

Thanks, I had gone through that thread already though. It doesn't really talk about the different ways to setup, it just claims you shouldn't store your backups on a vmfs store. I was mainly asking about the different scenarios i listed above and which would be best, of if there is a better one I don't have listed.

[foggy]

At least several guys have described their setup in this thread and I thought that it could be helpful.

[cffit]

It was helpful to read through for sure, just didn't feel like it applied to the scenarios I had above. I wish VEEAM supported backup to tape as that would be a huge selling point and save people a lot of efforts in figuring out all the different ways to get the files to tape.

[coveytx]

Ours is pretty similar to iroche -- a Dell R510 with enough local storage for 1 week's worth of backups. When the weekend full backup jobs complete, they trigger BE2010 to copy the VEEAM backup files to tape. Works pretty well. One thing we got lucky on, we anticipated that the VEEAM server wouldn't be that resource hungry; it turns out, at least in our case, it is, and the R510 was well-spec'd to handle the loads.

[cffit]

Thanks for the response. I'm surprised that the VEEAM support person I spoke with on another issue had mentioned to me that it is not best practice to have VEEAM on a physical box, but maybe he said that in the case the the physical box isn't connected to the SAN network.

I assume even with your VMs going to NTFS storage you can still do the instant recovery and storage vmotion somehow? Also, do all of your VEEAM roles run on your physical boxes or do you have some running in the VM infrastructure?

[daphnis]

Going to make this a short post as I've read several other Veeam/Backup Exec posts. Here's what I envision as my design, tell me if this doesn't seem like a good idea:

Have a physical backup server with 32GB RAM, ~23TB DAS, Veeam, BE 2012, and SAS PowerVault TL2000 tape library (LTO-5 tapes). Our client decided, against my advise, to continue to invest in BE, so I'm stuck using that for physical servers but, like others, I found it just won't work with virtual machines reliably. Support has been atrocious and I'm no closer to getting a resolution after 3 months with cases escalated to top-tier engineers. Want to perform operational restores from the DAS and duplicate full backups only to tape on a weekly basis for off-site rotation. BE jobs duplicating only last full backups to tape. Veeam using reversed incremental to repository. Have a BE job that pulls from that repository dir and copies to tape only the VBM and VBK files. All tape writing occurs on a Sunday, so just need the latest full backups from Veeam and BE.

Are there any problems with this design, specifically difficulties in performing either file-level or full VM restorations from those VBKs on tape?

[dellock6]

No, the design is good. Also, LTO5 is fast enough to help you restore vbk from tape at a decent speed, obviously depending on the size of the vbk saved on tape.

Luca.

[daphnis]

We aren't dealing with massive amounts of data yet, and tape will only be used as disaster recovery. What is the restore procedure here for the VBKs? Restore locally, point Veeam at those files for a restore job, and be able to recover files, app data, or whole VMs?

[foggy]

We aren't dealing with massive amounts of data yet, and tape will only be used as disaster recovery. What is the restore procedure here for the VBKs? Restore locally, point Veeam at those files for a restore job, and be able to recover files, app data, or whole VMs?

Yep, simple as that. Restore backups from tape, import them into Veeam B&R, and run restore job.

[Colvm]

Hi,


We're having a similar setup, here is how it's laid out: 2 sites with a bunch of VMs in each site. One Veeam VM in each site, replicating all VMs from that site into the other site to second tier storage (iSCSI, VMFS, visible to VC etc.). This way we end up with each site containing full set of all our VMs, half from that site and running, half from the other site and shutdown. In case of a loss of entire site, we have all our VMs in the other site and should be good. VMs are already on VMFS and basically ready to be powered on manually without need to rely on Veeam.

Now - we also want to dump this on tape, just in case. In one of our sites we have a physical server running BE 12.5, tape library and enough local storage to hold backups of all VMs. What we do is create Veeam backup jobs (on top of all replication jobs, that's a separate thing), and backup running VMs from that site + replicas from the other site. This way all backups are from local site and are not affected by WAN link speeds.

Then, as part of Veeam VM backup, we set Configuration Backup option to the same backup repository as the VMs. This way, I hope and ask for configation, in case all VMs are lost and we need to do full restore from tapes, we'd :
- Install a new Veeam VM.
- Restore configuration from backup repository so backups can be recognized
- Restore individual VMs

Does this sounds right? My main concern is making thew Veeam VM recognize backups so they can be restored. If we dont' have this configuration backued up, would we be able to somehow force a new Veeam VM recognize backups from the repository?


Thanks

[foggy]

Does this sounds right? My main concern is making thew Veeam VM recognize backups so they can be restored. If we dont' have this configuration backued up, would we be able to somehow force a new Veeam VM recognize backups from the repository?

Actually, you do not need to restore the configuration, just importing your backup files into new Veeam B&R console is sufficient to be able to restore from them. You can even use a standalone utility (extract.exe) coming with every Veeam B&R installation and allowing to restore VMs from any VBK file created by Veeam B&R, even without the product installed.

[brshoemak]

We're about to pull the trigger on Veeam with BE 2012 (much to my chagrin) setup and we're configuring it pretty much like everyone is suggesting. We have a really simple environment, physical Veeam server with about 4TB, single external LTO2 drive. Veeam will do reverse incrementals for 30 days prior and a I set BE to backup ONLY files with the .VBK files in the backup folder to tape - that way we don't have to worry about changing name conventions, it will always only backup the fulls and not all the incrementals.

As a side note, I just (this morning) spoke to a Veeam sales rep and he said that the next version of Veeam will have tape support. Of course he said that new version won't be out until around Q3-ish which doesn't help me today. The only thing worse than using BE2012 is having to pay for the privilege to use it.

[payneful]

I have over 50 VMs on 5 hosts with multiple iSCSI SANs and more than 40 physical servers still to backup full once a week and incremental nightly. I am using the following scenario:

I have Veeam and Backupexec 2012 installed on physical server with DAS and LTO5. Server is also connected to multiple SANs for backing up VMs in multiple VMware datacenters. I run Veeam full backups every weekend and incrementals every night during the week. My Veeam jobs run on their schedule and then kick of a powershell script that starts a BackupExec job to backup just the Veeam changes to tape after every job. This has been very reliable once I was able to get BackupExec 2012 to backup just the changes and often I have been able to easily recover files or an entire VM since.

I am posting because this worked well in BackupExec 2010 and then Symantec had to change the scripting in BackupExec 2012 to powershell and change the backup jobs to server centric. Maybe this can help someone else. One of my powershell scripts are below:

Code: Select all

<##
Command to add to Veeam to execute Backup Exec Job
powershell.exe -command "& {Invoke-Command -computername falcon -filepath c:\bescripts\ps\DCs.ps1}"
DCs.ps1 Contents follow:
Sets BackupExec Media Set to Weekend or Daily depending on day of week.
The backupagentserver, media set, storage device and path to backup need to be changed. 
BackupExec/Veeam server name: Falcon
##>

import-module bemcli
#
$a = get-date
$startdate = ((Get-Date).toshortdatestring()+" 00:01:00")
$dow = ($a).DayOfWeek
$th = ($a).hour
#$ts = $a.toshorttimestring()
#
if ( $dow -eq "Sunday" ) {
	$BESel = New-BEFileSystemSelection -Path "D:\VeeamBackups\Backup Job DCs" -PathIsDirectory -Recurse -IncludeOnlyModifiedFiles -FromDate $startdate
	Get-BEAgentServer falcon | Submit-BEOnetimeBackupJob -BackupSetDescription "DCs to tape" -Name "DCs to tape" `
	-FileSystemSelection $BESel -Storage "Dell LTO5 Robotic Library" `
	-tapestoragemediaset "Tape Media Set Weekend" `
	| Wait-BEJob
	get-bejob -Name "DCs to tape*" | Remove-BEJob -Confirm:$false
	}
	elseif ( $dow -eq "Saturday" ) {
	$BESel = New-BEFileSystemSelection -Path "D:\VeeamBackups\Backup Job DCs" -PathIsDirectory -Recurse -IncludeOnlyModifiedFiles -FromDate $startdate
	Get-BEAgentServer falcon | Submit-BEOnetimeBackupJob -BackupSetDescription "DCs to tape" -name "DCs to tape" `
	-FileSystemSelection $BESel -Storage "Dell LTO5 Robotic Library" `
	-tapestoragemediaset "Tape Media Set Weekend" `
	| Wait-BEJob
	get-bejob -Name "DCs to tape*" | Remove-BEJob -Confirm:$false
	}
	elseif ( $dow -eq "Monday" -and $th -lt "13" ) {
	$BESel = New-BEFileSystemSelection -Path "D:\VeeamBackups\Backup Job DCs" -PathIsDirectory -Recurse -IncludeOnlyModifiedFiles -FromDate $startdate
	Get-BEAgentServer falcon | Submit-BEOnetimeBackupJob -BackupSetDescription "DCs to tape" -name "DCs to tape" `
	-FileSystemSelection $BESel -Storage "Dell LTO5 Robotic Library" `
	-tapestoragemediaset "Tape Media Set Weekend" `
	| Wait-BEJob
	get-bejob -Name "DCs to tape*" | Remove-BEJob -Confirm:$false
	}	
	elseif ( $dow -eq "Friday" -and $th -gt "13" ) {
	$BESel = New-BEFileSystemSelection -Path "D:\VeeamBackups\Backup Job DCs" -PathIsDirectory -Recurse -IncludeOnlyModifiedFiles -FromDate $startdate
	Get-BEAgentServer falcon | Submit-BEOnetimeBackupJob -BackupSetDescription "DCs to tape" -name "DCs to tape" `
	-FileSystemSelection $BESel -Storage "Dell LTO5 Robotic Library" `
	-tapestoragemediaset "Tape Media Set Weekend" `
	| Wait-BEJob
	get-bejob -Name "DCs to tape*" | Remove-BEJob -Confirm:$false
	}
	else {
	$BESel = New-BEFileSystemSelection -Path "D:\VeeamBackups\Backup Job DCs" -PathIsDirectory -Recurse -IncludeOnlyModifiedFiles -FromDate $startdate
	Get-BEAgentServer falcon | Submit-BEOnetimeBackupJob -BackupSetDescription "DCs to tape" -name "DCs to tape" `
	-FileSystemSelection $BESel -Storage "Dell LTO5 Robotic Library" `
	-tapestoragemediaset "Tape Media Set Daily" `
	| Wait-BEJob
	get-bejob -Name "DCs to tape*" | Remove-BEJob -Confirm:$false
	}