How to route Backup Copy Job Traffic / Tape job

[mma]

Hi

Any idea how to solve this? It’s a bit complicated
You will need pen and paper.

Site A:
Virtual backup server (Server A) “Mgmt LAN”

• Veeam Mgmt Server
• Gateway Server for Repsoitory B
• Virtual proxy

Physical server (Server Z) “Infrastructure LAN”

• Windows Repository (Repository A)
• Direct SAN Proxy

Any to any rule from “Mgmt LAN” to “Infrastructure LAN”

Site B:
Physical Server (Server B) "LAN B"

• CIFS Repository (Repository B)
• Tape Server

VPN between Site A and Site B.

There is no network traffic allowed between “Infrastructure LAN” and “LAN B”. So the data movers cannot talk to each other. Traffic is allowed between "Mgmt LAN" and "LAN B".
To route the traffic, we have to use a CIFS repository (on server B) and define server A as gateway server. Not really nice, but it works.

Now we have the problem that the CIFS repository is used as source for the backup to tape job on Server B. All traffic has to be transferred from Repository B to Server A (Gateway) and back to Server B to tape.
We tried to set a proxy affinity rule “Server A” for Repository B and use Server B as Gateway server. Proxy affinity does not help as backup copy job uses only data movers and no proxies…

So how could I solve this?

Regards
Marcel

[csydas]

Hey Marcel,

This caught my attention the other day and it was a fun think to be sure, but not a lot of good answers I'm aware of. The dead-easy option is File to Tape jobs instead of Machine to Tape Jobs, using the tape server as the source, but that strikes me as not a good idea since it's Backup Copy and the main chain is in flux constantly. This should, however, avoid moving the data across the link and at least start off-loading the backups to tape. If you think you could be okay with just Full Backups, I suppose you can just mask for *.vbk and get your GFS points and whatever the VBK happens to be that day. This doesn't sit well with me personally as I'd rather have the Machine to Backup tracking, but hey, at least they're on tape.

The only other way I can think of involves presenting repository A as CIFS as well so that the Veeam Server is gateway for that, then setting the tape server as the gateway for repository B, but this also doesn't sit well with me either cause you're dropping to CIFS.

[mma]

Hello Harvey

Thanks for your inputs

File to tape is something we were think about. It would solve the traffic routing problem, but there are some huge disadvantages...

- It's a backup copy job without GFS - the vbk is allways at the end of the chain
- As you said - machine backup tracking is not possible

Looks like out network guy has to make a decission:
1. Have a lot of "useless" traffic on the VPN link
2. open some ports

Thanks
Marcel