New Veeeam Server Recommendations & How to Transfer

[ian118]

Hi All,

I have been using Veeam for about a month now and am generally happy with it. I am using it with 3 ESXi 4.1 hosts in a cluster and a 4 member Equallogic iSCSI Group.

I have been using a temporary server for Veeam backup with Windows 2008 R2 and two direct connections into the iSCSI Network using the Equallogic MPIO software and backing up in SAN Mode, I am happy with the performance im getting but I would expect more.

The Veeam server saves its backup files to another server at another site in order to provide offsite backups bandwidth is no issue, this target server is connected to a SAN via Fibre. But does no processing its simply hosting shares the main Veeam server writes to.

I have now ordered a full time server for Veeam with the following spec - 1 * 6 Core Intel X5680 @ 3.33ghz 12m cache (best processor you can get on this Dell 1U Server) 32mb 1333mhz DDR RAM 2 * 146gb 15k SAS Drives. I have also ordered an additional 4 port intel 1GB NIC Card. This will also be using MS Software initiator.My questions are as follows

1. Is this a good spec server for Veeam backup both 4 & 5.

2. What OS should I used 2003 or 2008 R2. I have read alot of threads including the sticky at the top about iSCSI Performance and tweaking you need to do in 2008, so im thinking I might be better going with the 2003 Option to get the performance without tweaking. What do people think?

3. What procedure do I use to fully transfer my current Veeam install Jobs, Changed Block info etc etc. SQL is currently installed on the same server as this new server is replacing. I would like complete steps how to fully transfer everything.

4. Will the answer to question 3 change if we upgrade to Version 5 before changing to the new server.

5. For my new server should I also use 2 NICS into my iSCSI Network and use the Equallogic MPIO software. Or should 1 NIC be ample without any MPIO.

Thanks in advance for your help.

[Gostev]

Hello and welcome!

1. Yes, this is a good spec, except that 4GB RAM would be plenty - and 32GB is real overkill.
2. May be good idea to go with 2003. We are not planning on discontinuing Windows 2003 support any time soon.
3. You will need to move SQL database files (MDF, LDF) of Veeam Backup configuration database to the SQL on the new server. You can search this forum for more info.
4. No changes.
5. I will leave that for Equallogic owners to comment on

Thanks!

[tsightler]

2. What OS should I used 2003 or 2008 R2. I have read alot of threads including the sticky at the top about iSCSI Performance and tweaking you need to do in 2008, so im thinking I might be better going with the 2003 Option to get the performance without tweaking. What do people think?

I would go with 2008 R2. I have found it to be more stable that 2003. We were having occasional random reboots of our Veeam server approximately every 30-45 days when we were running 2003. This has gone away completely with upgrading to 2008 R2. I experienced no performance issues with Windows 2008 R2 but, that being said, I'm using hardware iSCSI HBA's rather than the software initiator so perhaps that's where the 2008 R2 issues come from.

5. For my new server should I also use 2 NICS into my iSCSI Network and use the Equallogic MPIO software. Or should 1 NIC be ample without any MPIO.

We use MPIO, but it's probably not necessary. A single NIC get's you to around 110-120MB/sec max, so if you have enough power, and you run a few jobs simultaneously, you might be able to push more than that with MPIO. Our servers are not very powerful and we top out around 100MB/sec with optimal compression just due to the capabilities of the box.