Load Balancing

[flavor4real]

Hello,
I have 6 Backup Jobs running at the same time, which hold a total of 52 VM's. I'm only backing up the System State. I have ready somewhere that there is a way to implement load balancing these Jobs, but can't find the post no more.

What do I have to do or how can I get this accomplished.

[Gostev]

Hi, no - load balancing is not possible in the current version... most likely, you heard it somewhere else. What exactly do you mean by "load balancing", and what functionality would be ideal to have? Thanks!

[flavor4real]

Hmm, I've read something abut running a new/ additional veeam instance and split the jobs to balance the backup jobs out.,.. this is the scenario.

I have 8 Backup Jobs running at individual time frames. However, 6 Jobs do overlap 4 times a day and I wanted to balance out the Backup Jobs. I've read there is a post-script command that would allow the backup Job start in sequence but I'm not sure if that's a road to go. If, then I will be able to setup 4 of these 6 jobs to run after the other is completed. I've read somewhere that a total of 8 Jobs can be run at the same time under veeam. Is that correct?

[Vitaliy S.]

Hmm, I've read something abut running a new/ additional veeam instance and split the jobs to balance the backup jobs out.,.. this is the scenario.

That's correct, but you should "balance" those jobs manually, meaning that you need to re-create those jobs on a new instance of the Veeam Backup server. You can use the same license file on these servers. Enteprise Manager will keep track of consolidated license usage.

I have 8 Backup Jobs running at individual time frames. However, 6 Jobs do overlap 4 times a day and I wanted to balance out the Backup Jobs. I've read there is a post-script command that would allow the backup Job start in sequence but I'm not sure if that's a road to go. If, then I will be able to setup 4 of these 6 jobs to run after the other is completed.

Running jobs in sequence should help you to avoid job overlaps. Please take a look at this topic for more info: Help! How can execute 7 job in sequence?

I've read somewhere that a total of 8 Jobs can be run at the same time under veeam. Is that correct?

As to your question about the number of concurrent jobs for a single backup server, then the answer is it depends.

It depends on the hardware configuration and general throughput you have in your environment. Basically, you can run multiple concurrent jobs if you'd like, but we do not recommend concurrent backup of VMs sharing the same storage. Parallel processing is not recommended because it causes issues in larger environments, especially around concurrent snapshot operations on the same LUN (causing snapshot/file operations timeouts etc.) In most cases, having 2-3 jobs is enough to fully saturate a Veeam Backup server and target backup storage I/O capacity.

Hope it helps and thank you for the feedback!

[flavor4real]

Hello,

...but we do not recommend concurrent backup of VMs sharing the same storage.

My question: I have two 2TB Mapped Raw LUN/EVA storage's and use both targets to backup all 75 VM's backup, which are split in 8 Backup Jobs. Correct me if I'm wrong but according to the quote above, it seems like that we should not have setup like tike that. Correct?

[Vitaliy S.]

Dennis,

Running parallel jobs has its pros, but also it has a number of drawbacks, for instance parallel snapshot operation on the same LUN (which is not recommended by VMware). What I was trying to say here, was that accessing the same LUN simultaneously might cause SCSI reservation timeouts etc. And this can lead to backup failures.

Again, you can setup multiple jobs and run them in parallel, but make sure your SAN LUNs do not suffer from multiple aborts and reservation timeouts.

Thank you!