New VEEAM Deployment

[DANCHUFT]

Hi,

I have previously used Veeam, around 4 years ago with an EMC Clariion Fibre Channel SAN utilising SAN Transport Mode and was very impressed with it, I realise things have moved on quite a bit with it since.

We are currently a NetApp shop but are potentially looking at moving to Nimble in the future and one of the question's around it is the best way to back it up.

I am basically looking for some opinions on the recommended deployment model for implementing VEEAM to backup the following ~150 VM's currently 21TB data on an FC NIMBLE Array with VMware. We would use VEEAM to do the monthly Archive snapshots, retaining 12 months on a disk target and also copying the jobs to Tape.

I know I'm going to need at least 1 Physical Server which will have SAN connectivity to the VMware stores on the nimble and also the backup repository target (possibly a NEXSAN E-Series). Am I best to go with additional Physical Backup Proxy Servers rather than Virtual? Sizing tools seem to hint at a repository of between 70 and 100TB depending on dedupe / compression, is there a limit to a supported VEEAM Repository size?

Is anyone here backing up a similar amount of VM's / Data using SAN Transport on FC and if so how many Proxy Servers are you using and what spec are the boxes?

Any advice or things to look out for would be greatly appreciated.

Oh and is there any news on VEEAM Integration / backup directly from Nimble snapshots?

[Vitaliy S.]

Hi Dan,

We are currently a NetApp shop but are potentially looking at moving to Nimble in the future and one of the question's around it is the best way to back it up.

Just out of curiosity, why are looking into to moving your infrastructure to Nimble storage?

I am basically looking for some opinions on the recommended deployment model for implementing VEEAM to backup the following ~150 VM's currently 21TB data on an FC NIMBLE Array with VMware. We would use VEEAM to do the monthly Archive snapshots, retaining 12 months on a disk target and also copying the jobs to Tape.

Do you mean archive snapshots on NetApp or monthly backups of your VMs?

I know I'm going to need at least 1 Physical Server which will have SAN connectivity to the VMware stores on the nimble and also the backup repository target (possibly a NEXSAN E-Series). Am I best to go with additional Physical Backup Proxy Servers rather than Virtual?

Since you have FC connection to your storage, then proxy server has to be physical in order to use direct SAN mode.

Sizing tools seem to hint at a repository of between 70 and 100TB depending on dedupe / compression, is there a limit to a supported VEEAM Repository size?

There are no such limits.

Is anyone here backing up a similar amount of VM's / Data using SAN Transport on FC and if so how many Proxy Servers are you using and what spec are the boxes?

The number of proxy servers should depend on your backup window. Since you can use direct SAN mode and storage snapshots (with NetApp), then I would go with physical proxy servers. You can use system hardware recommendations for your proxy servers taken from our Release Notes document.

Oh and is there any news on VEEAM Integration / backup directly from Nimble snapshots?

No, updates on this.

Thanks!