Differentiate between proxies for backup or replication use

[Peejay62]

I know you can choose what proxy will be used for backup or replication jobs, either automatic or you assign specific ones. There is no way to differentiate further based on type, e.i. backup or replication job. why I am asking?
On my backupservers I have proxies running that are from different vcenters and these vcenters (and the proxies) run at a different datacenters (datacenters are appx 30kilometers apart). So I have Backupserver 1 located at DC1 with proxies from DC1 and DC2, let's call it PrxDC1 and PRxDC2.
Setting up a replication job from DC1 to DC2 let's me choose PrxDC1 as a source proxy, PrxDC2 as a target. Works fine an runs farely fast (as expected).
In all my backupjobs at DC1 I have set proxy selection on automatic. So, as I see it, it might happen that, using nbd and because of high workload, the automatic proxy selection for a backup job chooses that remote proxy ? Then I will get a very inefficient and slow datapath for the backup. So that's what my question is about, no way to say "this proxy can only be used for replication (or backup)". I guess this can only be solved by setting the backup proxy selection to specific ones (excluding the ones I don't want to be used by my backupjobs)?
If you have any other suggestions, they are welcome. You might as well consider this question a kind of an enhancement request for a new release. I think it will add some extra value being able to split the proxy role. One can dedicate specific proxies for either replication or backup so you can effectively do some performance and resourcemanagement if desired.

Thanks, Peter

[chrisdearden]

Hi Peter , how often are you running the replication ?

[Peejay62]

Hi Chris,

it depends, one could be every 30 minutes, the other every 4 hours. It for sure will run multiple times within the regular backupwindow..

[Vitaliy S.]

Hi Peter,

Automatic proxy selection should not be choosing remote instances, but if it does happen for some reason, then selecting a pool of proxy servers for the jobs should resolve that. Also you may want to restrict proxy servers to fail over to a network mode, this should make your jobs use "the proper" proxy servers too.

Thanks!

[chrisdearden]

Hi Chris,

it depends, one could be every 30 minutes, the other every 4 hours. It for sure will run multiple times within the regular backupwindow..

Gotcha. The only reason. I asked was that with v8, you can produce your replicas from the backups which would negate this issue.

[Peejay62]

Hi Peter,

Automatic proxy selection should not be choosing remote instances,
Thanks!

Is that by design or it should not be but can happen anyway?

Hi Peter,

but if it does happen for some reason, then selecting a pool of proxy servers for the jobs should resolve that. Also you may want to restrict proxy servers to fail over to a network mode, this should make your jobs use "the proper" proxy servers too.

Thanks!

would be more convenient to have an global option "exclude proxy for backup jobs" available. I cannot / don't want to restrict failover to network mode and modifying my jobs assigning them specific proxies is normally not the thing I do. Like to let them pick them out of the proxy pool. And, If you assign specific ones, adding some more proxies to the pool will than always require job maintenance... If there was such a global setting, I could dedicate some proxies to replication very easy.

Thanks for your suggestions, Peter

[Vitaliy S.]

Is that by design or it should not be but can happen anyway?

Veeam B&R decides what proxy servers to use based on its operation mode and network subnet. What is your Veeam B&R server version/build number?

would be more convenient to have an global option "exclude proxy for backup jobs" available. I cannot / don't want to restrict failover to network mode and modifying my jobs assigning them specific proxies is normally not the thing I do. Like to let them pick them out of the proxy pool. And, If you assign specific ones, adding some more proxies to the pool will than always require job maintenance... If there was such a global setting, I could dedicate some proxies to replication very easy.

Well...this setting makes sense for people that are running backup and replication jobs, otherwise they could accidentally exclude all proxy servers which will lead to backup job failures

It might sound a bit crazy in your situation , but what if you setup two backup servers - one for backup jobs and another one for replications? The backup server managing replication jobs will be deployed on the DR site, so that you could use built-in failover capabilities (re-IP, failback etc.) of the Veeam server when your main server goes down. As to the backup server management task, then it would be done by Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager (included with your download).

[Peejay62]

B&R server 7.0.0.871, the latest I presume. My problem is that, though we have two datacenters, we have a stretched network. From a networking perspective one logical network, so a subnet can be stretched over the two datacenters.. Veeam will be unaware of the proxies location I guess.
I am thinking of various solutions, the one mentioned with a seperate backup server for replication only isn't that bad. Well, it is not that I am running huge amount of replications right now, but I am preparing for it because we will start making use of replication more frequent now because the business has noted the added value of it.

Thanks, Peter

[Vitaliy S.]

Peter,

Yes, you're correct with stretched network the trick with subnets will not work, so using a secondary Veeam B&R server in future should be a way to go (actually pretty common practice among our existing customers).

Thanks!

[Peejay62]

Hi,

Reviving this thread a little. First of all, I am still running V8. Looking into V9 doc and releasenotes and all it's improvement hasn't given me an insight if anything has changed in consideration of proxy selection (not able to run V9 yet). Beside the fact that I still would like to be able to differentiate proxy assignment (backup/copy) It would also be welcome to be able to exclude a proxy from the global list. What I mean is right now you got two options: automatic selection (picking from all the defined and using the most suited proxies) or assigning specific proxies from the list to a specific job. What I am looking for is that from the global proxy list one or more proxies can be excluded by default. So in effect generally speaking proxies get picked out of the global list as default (leaving out the excluded ones). Then the excluded ones can be used for specific assignment to specific job. (for various reasons I don't want specific proxies being used unless I assign them to specific jobs).
There are some use cases for this. One is that I now have a vsphere cluster and the proxy inside that cluster should only process vm's in that cluster. I can assign that proxy to the jobs running for that backup but I cannot prevent that proxy from being picked by other jobs. Maybe this is some food for thought?

thanks, Peter

[dellock6]

Hi Peter,
there is no improvement in v9 compared to v8 in regards to proxy selection. You can obtain something like you want by overriding the automatic proxy selection and assign pecific proxies to the different jobs. If for example you have 8 proxies, you can have backup jobs using 4 of them (by selecting the 4 in the settings) and select the other 4 for a replication job.

In regards to the use case, thanks for the feedback!

[Peejay62]

Hi Luca,

I understand the method you suggest, but that ends up in a lot of administration and management imo. You should do that then for each job individually and when another, new proxy is added, you need to manually assign that as well to all your jobs. My wish would be: ability to disable proxies out of the default, automatic selection process and ability to assign specific proxies to specific jobs/usage. The latter ability is already kind of there but because of the all or nothing automatic selection that doesn't completely covers the proxy selection.

I hope that maybe at R&D there will be some thinking about the possibility for an enhancement on this matter.
thanks, Peter

[dellock6]

The idea of "proxy groups" has been raised in the past by other users, so thanks for adding your vote. Will see what the future will bring, I agree it makes a lot of sense.