Greenhorn here, seeking advice on configuration

[carsontl]

I've recently been tasked with an additional hat on my head: backups. I'm beginning to learn but as it still sits I really don't know what I'm doing.
I've done the research and presented the boss with my proposal for software/hardware to build the backup solution from the ground up.

The results:

Veeam full suite with cloud
48 TB Equalogic SAN equates to 33TB useable
amazon glacier account

I'm looking for some guidance on things that are best practice that I'm missing and then I need advice on how to set up the veeam cloud section.


Background:
- Our vsphere environment has 3 hosts, 6 sockets total, and houses all the virtual machines in the backup job.
- Veeam sits on a physical Dell R620.

Veeam configuration:
- only one proxy (the physical server veeam is on)
- I've built a single backup job that backs up our 2 domain controllers, 4 web servers, 3 sql servers, and our 2 exchange servers. Total 11 servers ~2 TB in size.
-----No secondary destinations (why is this necessary when I have the cloud backup?)
-----Forward Incremental configured with synthetic fulls every saturday
-----No active fulls
-----advanced Storage tab: dedup on and compression optimal
-----advanced vSphere tab: vmware tools quiescence enabled and CBT turned on
-----application-aware image processing enabled
-----guest file system indexing enabled
-----run job daily at 10pm everyday, 3 retries and wait for 10 minutes per retry

Second step is veeam cloud backups
- amazon glacier account
- currently no configuration setup other than backing up veeam's configuration to glacier.

Ideally I want to be able to grab each month's final synthetic full and store it in glacier and keep it there for 12 months and have it auto delete.

Please and thank you so much for even looking!

[carsontl]

Will anyone be able to help me out? Please and thank you!

[foggy]

Hello Tom and welcome to the Veeam community forums!

- Our vsphere environment has 3 hosts, 6 sockets total, and houses all the virtual machines in the backup job.

Am I right assuming that you have only hosts local storage?

-----No secondary destinations (why is this necessary when I have the cloud backup?)

We always recommend to follow the so called 3-2-1 rule (3 copies, 2 media types, 1 off site). Backup is not a backup until you have at least 3 copies of it.

-----No active fulls

Please find recommendations on the active full backup frequency in this thread.

Ideally I want to be able to grab each month's final synthetic full and store it in glacier and keep it there for 12 months and have it auto delete.

I believe you can specify the required schedule to upload backup files to the cloud and Veeam B&R Cloud Edition also has its own retention policy settings applied to the backups stored in the cloud storage.

Hope this helps.

[veremin]

-----advanced vSphere tab: vmware tools quiescence enabled and CBT turned on
-----application-aware image processing enabled

If you want to use both AAIP (for Windows-based machines) and VMware quiescence (for the rest) options, you should select "Ignore application processing failures" in AAIP settings. This will enable VMware quiescence on all VMs that failed to use native Windows engine (VSS).

Thanks.

[carsontl]

Hello Tom and welcome to the Veeam community forums!
Am I right assuming that you have only hosts local storage?

Hello Foggy! Thanks for having me. Sorry, no we have an Equalogic SAN that has about 43TB of effective production space. Our backup solution will be another Equalogic 7200rpm set of disks with about 33TB Useable.

We always recommend to follow the so called 3-2-1 rule (3 copies, 2 media types, 1 off site). Backup is not a backup until you have at least 3 copies of it.

Does the production copy count as a copy? Production / Backup location / Cloud backup ?

Please find recommendations on the active full backup frequency in this thread.

Should I set the monthlies up as a separate backup job so it stores in its own folder? Veeam Cloud looks for a specific folder.

I believe you can specify the required schedule to upload backup files to the cloud and Veeam B&R Cloud Edition also has its own retention policy settings applied to the backups stored in the cloud storage.

Hope this helps.

I think I should be able to make it happen with Veeam Cloud. Thanks very much Foggy!!!

If you want to use both AAIP (for Windows-based machines) and VMware quiescence (for the rest) options, you should select "Ignore application processing failures" in AAIP settings. This will enable VMware quiescence on all VMs that failed to use native Windows engine (VSS).

Thanks.

Thanks I will!

[veremin]

Does the production copy count as a copy? Production / Backup location / Cloud backup ?

Yep, it does. You might want to see this article for more information regarding 3-2-1 rule.

Should I set the monthlies up as a separate backup job so it stores in its own folder?

No, you should specify full backup schedule in the settings of existing job.

Thanks.

[carsontl]

Thanks Eremin, very helpful.

[foggy]

Sorry, no we have an Equalogic SAN that has about 43TB of effective production space. Our backup solution will be another Equalogic 7200rpm set of disks with about 33TB Useable.

Then consider direct SAN backup transport mode for the most optimal backup performance.