Licensing, Proxy and B&R 6.5

[Yuki]

Hey all,
We are setting up a DR site ( site 2) in a remote location to backup lice or replicated systems in office (site 1). The plan is to install backup proxy at the remote site and stream backups to it. However, we got another license of Veeam for remote site in order to ensure we can backup VMs there is the site 1 goes down and DR site becomes primary.

So the question is: Can Veeam from site 1 (license 1) backup to a proxy at remote site 2 with a separate license? Both licenses are for the same product (VMware, Standard).

[Gostev]

Hi Yuki, yes this will work fine. Thanks!

[Yuki]

Excellent, then can i get some help with optimal structuring of the systems?

From what I read here in forums, the two servers can't share Veeam SQL db (makes sense). But how should we structure the backup architecture so in case if entire Site 1 is gone - we can just fire up all systems at site 2? We need to make a backup of Veem server at site 2?


Here is what we have:

Site 1:
- ESXi 1 (6 VMs)
- ESXi 2 (1 VM )
- ESXi 3 ((replica of of 7 VMs ESXi 1+ESXi2)
- NAS 1 (backups of 7 VMs ESXi 1+ESXi2)
- Physical server (Veeam1+vCenter)

Site 2 (remote DR):
- ESXi 4 (Veeam2 VM)
- NAS 2

What we really wanted to do is to replicate the replicas from ESXi3 in main site to ESXi4 in DR site and then perform backups of replicas from ESXi4 onto NAS2.

On site 1 (Veeam1) I've added remote (Veeam2) as a proxy, and NAS as a repository that can be written through the proxy
On site 2 (veeam2) I've added Veeam1 as a proxy.

Shell I just configure Veeam1 to replicate replicas from ESXi3->ESXi4 and then perform backups from ESXi4 to NAS2?
How would i go about SQL database from site1?

Spasibo!

[veremin]

In case of remote replication, it’s highly-recommended to have one proxy in each site (Production, DR), and, as I can see, you, successfully followed this recommendation. However, I would propose you to create windows-based VM in ESXi3 host and use it as a source proxy in order to leverage Hot-Add functionality.

As for your backup-servers, let your Production VBR Server be responsible for jobs within production site only. And all "remote" jobs (such as, remote replication) will be managed by DR VBR Server. Thus, in disaster situation all functionality (Failover, Failback and etc.) can be performed by DR VBR Server itself without any issues. And later all of the backups residing on NAS 1 can be imported to VBR Server №2.

Also be aware that in case of you backing up or replicating VMs residing on ESXi3, CBT (change block tracking) will not work, due to the fact that CBT can’t be enabled on VM with snapshots, and replica always has at least one. This means that during each run of replication VMs will be read as a whole in order to find blocks that have been changed since the last run. It may result in increased backup window. The situation is the same with backing up replicas from ESXi4 to NAS2.

So, it might be worth creating a separate job, which would replicate virtual machines, not their replicas, from ESXi1. Thereby, after first job run only changes would be read and transferred via WAN connection. In this case, also don’t forget about creating a VM on ESXi1 that can be used as source proxy (Hot-Add method).

Thanks.

[Yuki]

Well,
That sounds reasonable, but we have a small caviat: Veeam in site2 (DR site) has only 2 CPU license since it was only supposed to backup the DR system when we fail over to it. So it can't be used to backup the 3 servers in site1.

So I guess it boils down to two questions:

1) From what i understand we must use Veeam1 in main site to do backups and replication to DR, but how do i make sure all restore and backup data is available to Veeam2 in DR site?

2) what's the best way to configure replication of replicas and backups from replicas?

[Gostev]

1. You can schedule PowerShell one-liner to perform backup repository rescan periodically, and it will automatically import any new backups appearing.

2. This has been discussed many times before, so please review the existing topics, and continue posting there if you still have further questions...

Thanks!

[Vitaliy S.]

That sounds reasonable, but we have a small caviat: Veeam in site2 (DR site) has only 2 CPU license since it was only supposed to backup the DR system when we fail over to it. So it can't be used to backup the 3 servers in site1.

What kind of Veeam license do you have on the primary and remote sites?

[Yuki]

Hi Vitaliy,

Primary is a 6 Socket Veeam Essentials Standard, Secondary is 2 Socket Veem Essentials Standard. Please note that the DR site is a separate entity (We've consulted with reseller and he confirmed with Veeam that was OK according to licensing terms).

[Vitaliy S.]

Ok, got it. Just wanted to say that if you had owned at least standard license key on both sites, then you would have been able to merge your license keys into 1 file and then use this single key on both sites. This would allow you to replicate VMs located on the main site by the DR backup server. My 2 cents

[Yuki]

By the way, i did use the search but didn't find particular threads. 1 or 2 that i did find had a few suggestions, but it didn't look like posters every cared to report back what they actually did after asking the same question. I think this is because the search terms that i'm interested in (backup veeam sql database and backup a replica or replicate a replica) are present in almost every thread here, so they are not unique to information i'm trying to locate.

I guess we could simply do an auto config save through Veeam and then Veeam SQL backup stored on a server that gets off-sited by veeam or R-SYNC, but that doesn't look like a clean solution that would be very quick to recover from (which is what we are looking to do with Veeam).

[Yuki]

Called support and got all the info i needed.

In B&R 6.5 built-in configuration backup captures EVERYTHING needed to restore Veeam backup server (so no need to dump SQL and replicate it), can schedule built-in Veeam config backup to save to remote location.

we were advised not to roll replicas from replicas or backups from replicas. So we will have 4 jobs - local replica and backup or possibly remote replica and backup. We will evaluate RSYNCing backups, but wanted to do it all with Veeam.

[Vitaliy S.]

we were advised not to roll replicas from replicas or backups from replicas. So we will have 4 jobs - local replica and backup or possibly remote replica and backup.

I would recommend to run two replication jobs (one to replicate locally, the second one should be targeted to the DR site). As to sending your backup files offsite, then rsync seems like one of the most popular approaches right now.