Physical Server Backup

[ckeith7777]

Will Veeam ever support the backup of physical servers? I hear Dell's AppAssure supports both virtual and physical backups. Would be a nice feature.

[Fiskepudding]

I would guess Never!
And i hardly ever use that word

[foggy]

Re: Features Request in Veeam Backup v6.1

[Gostev]

I would guess Never!

Well, I never say never, as our promise is to listen to our customers and build the tools they need. We are ready to deliver any feature there will be big demand for from our customer base. But, it will always comes down to priorities, which are in turn based on amount of requests and value to the product for each pending feature. Currently, this feature is not high on our current priorities list - and I don't know if it will ever make it there. This only depends on you, our customers and partners.

I hear Dell's AppAssure supports both virtual and physical backups.

Don't get fooled by them claiming support for all possible hypervisors. In reality, AppAssure does physical only. Sure, they are able to backup virtual servers by treating them as regular physical servers, but obviously such architecture is unacceptable for serious VM backup. There is existing long discussion about AppAssure here, in case you care for further info.

[ckeith7777]

Thanks for the replies everyone... Right now i use Veeam for all my virtuals and BackupExec for physical. To put it nicely, i dislike Symantec. I just wish Veeam would add a physical solution. Gostev i will review the AppAssure discussion. Thanks!

[Gostev]

Chuck, out of curiosity, what are your physical servers (OS and applications), and what are the reasons for you to keep them physical? I am not looking to criticize your decision in any way, but instead to learn why you decided not to virtualize them. And may be spread some doubts were applicable. Thanks!

[ckeith7777]

I have 2 exchange 2010 mailbox servers, 4 SQL servers. 2 DC's (2 Virtual DC's as well) and 4 Terminal Servers. (Server 2008 and 2008 R2) These are the only servers I have left in the physical world. I may be able to get away with P2V’ing Exchange and the terminal servers, but I don’t have enough IOPS to support SQL in my current configuration. (Without spending a lot of money on SAN upgrades)

[habibalby]

I have 2 exchange 2010 mailbox servers, 4 SQL servers. 2 DC's (2 Virtual DC's as well) and 4 Terminal Servers. (Server 2008 and 2008 R2) These are the only servers I have left in the physical world. I may be able to get away with P2V’ing Exchange and the terminal servers, but I don’t have enough IOPS to support SQL in my current configuration. (Without spending a lot of money on SAN upgrades)

You have a valid reason why you wouldn't virtualize such of hungry IOPS application since your backend storage cannot handle it. But still you can use Veeam backup to backup/copy your files from the physical servers to your NFS / any shared disk "Backup to Disk".

If you don't have the tools to backup your DCs, SQL or Exchange, you can use the local built-in feature to backup the application and dump them to disk, then use Veeam as a Centralize Enterprise Backup Application to copy the the files of these application from the Physical servers to your Backup Repository on Veeam.

Remember, File Copy doesn't have an incremental features to take only the recent changed files not have a CBT functionality to take only the changes too, it's a normal file copy jobs.
1. DCs, you can use System State backup.
2. SQL you can use the built-in feature in MSSQL to backup the databases.
3. Exchange, you have only the option to use the local backup feature.
4. Buy another third party product to backup your physical server or another SAN to handle the physical servers IOPS and you can virtualize them and use Veeam as a Centralize Backup Application for all your servers.

Hope it helps.

Thanks,

[ckeith7777]

Thanks for the info Habibalby...

[dellock6]

Not really Veeam related, but a consideration on your IOPS requirements for going virtual.
Right now your physical workloads are having the IOPS they need from some storage, right? Even if it's from local hard disks of their respective underlying servers, why not to plan for P2Ving them and let them run on the same local storage once the server is reinstalled with ESXi? This is by far the easiest way to virtualize those kind of workloads, and you can gain at the same time added DR functionality, since when you need you can always restore them on other server even if with lower IOPS.

Then, after usual hardware lifecycles (3 to 5 years) you will be already virtualized and you could put your budget on a new and more powerful SAN storage instead of buying again the same physical servers fully loaded with disks.

My 2 cents,
Luca.

[tietzjd]

IOPS is consideration but so is disk latency. Beyond that could Veeam just tweak some things to make this happen?

So the next trick would be to back Physical server to backup it self up in P2V manor and than convert that to Veeam Backup file.

Team up with p2v vendor, I would think that someone would jump on this since Physical servers are a dying breed. Than assign a proxy to convert that VMDK already on the destination disk to Veeam backup file?

Sounds easy, I sure it's more complex than I am making it.

[dellock6]

Not sure I followed your post....
My suggestion was: P2V your physical server in a VM, install ESXi on that same server and run the VM there. Same hardware, so no difference in IOPS and disk latency (or any other specs...) and then you can backup that server via Veeam since it became a virtual machine.

Luca.

[tietzjd]

Luca--- I think started answering question for posts earlier than yours. But I agree a P2V to a repository and than convert it to Veeam backup file should be doable.

[J1mbo]

Not really Veeam related, but a consideration on your IOPS requirements for going virtual.
Right now your physical workloads are having the IOPS they need from some storage, right? Even if it's from local hard disks of their respective underlying servers...

Totally agree with this post. IOPS is an odd reason to cite.

[JoshRountree]

I know licensing might be a deal breaker sometimes. What you pay to license your entire virtual infrastructure for a single server (due to licensing costs) might buy you 2 servers (production + DR) and all the equipment needed to back them up.

If you *had* to use a physical server, can anyone recommend a backup solution? Backup Exec?

[Gostev]

What you pay to license your entire virtual infrastructure for a single server (due to licensing costs) might buy you 2 servers (production + DR) and all the equipment needed to back them up.

You mean VMware? Because Hyper-V is completely free (with no limitations on free version), and Veeam supports it. And overall, Hyper-V 2012 actually beats vSphere 5.1 in my mind in terms of functionality (at least for small deployments, such as the one being discussed in your example).

[JoshRountree]

You mean VMware? Because Hyper-V is completely free (with no limitations on free version), and Veeam supports it. And overall, Hyper-V 2012 actually beats vSphere 5.1 in my mind in terms of functionality (at least for small deployments, such as the one being discussed in your example).

No, in my particular case I would like to virtualize a server that needs Oracle as the database backend. I have 3 hosts, 2 in production, 1 at DR. According to Oracle licensing I need to have all the processors in each host licensed to be legal. Both in production so I can VMotion if need be as well as HA, and DR in case I need DR. For the amount of money to buy 6 Oracle licenses I can buy 2 servers (with only 1 processor each) and all the hardware and software to back them up cheaper than I can license Oracle to run virtualized.

It could be that my software vendor could come up with a better solution (hosted vs. in-house), but those are my options now.

[tsightler]

To meet the letter of the law regarding Oracle's ridiculous licensing you are probably correct, however, if you have only a single Oracle instance, and at no point will you ever run that instance on more than a single host at a time, you can probably get by with licensing only a single host and still be legal, as the actual Oracle statement is that any host with a running Oracle instance must be fully licensed, and with only a single instance it's impossible for it to ever run on more than a single host at a time, and Oracle's socket and core licenses are transferable.

Even with multiple instances, many customers choose to push this limit by tying their Oracle instances to a single host and only vMotioning them temporarily for maintenance. This likely doesn't meet the "letter of the law" according to Oracle, but would be virtually impossible to detect during an audit, assuming Oracle actually ever performs an audit, and apparently many customers, along with their corporate legal counsel, have decided that there's not much risk to this approach.

Of course, never take your licensing advice from a random guy on a forum (although I've had significant previous experience with Oracle licensing).

[dellock6]

Tom, unfortunately is not that easy...

Designing Oracle environments on VMware has always been a sort of "black magic" right because of Oracle unclear licensing, and for sure they do this on purpose so they can always charge customers much more than what is needed.

Michael Webster has written one of the best articles about Oracle licensing on VMware, it's worth a read:
http://longwhiteclouds.com/2012/07/21/f ... e-vsphere/

Luca.

[tsightler]

I am intimately familiar with Oracle licensing on VMware and wish I could share more of those details on this public forum, however, suffice it to say that the blog you linked to pretty much mirrors my statements above, just with much more detail. My post above was not intended to be licensing advice, but rather a reflection of what I see in the real world. My actual advice would be to aggressively negotiate your best deal up front (you can get a good deal on the "dead" sockets in you infrastructure), get a pricing agreement in place for maintenance and any future socket upgrades, and stay aggressive in all dealings. If you do this, you can negotiate a deal that will keep you compliant with the letter of the Oracle agreement, while only costing moderately more than physical, or potentially significantly less if you run multiple instances.

[dellock6]

Yep, that's what everybody dealing with this has always told me, basically there is nothing fixed and you can negotiate on everything.

Luca.

[garymansell]

I asked this very question about Oracle licensing to my Oracle Account manager and this was the response that I got:

The Oracle licensing policy states that if there is any installation of an Oracle database on a remote server, this server must be licensed.

The definition of an installation means any control files, dll’s, log files, exe’s, data files. Even if the database is not running, but has an installation, it must be licensed.

This would suggest to me that even replicated Oracle installations will require a license even if they are not running?

[chadtandy]

I too would be interested in Veeam being able to backup physical servers. We are a 95% virtual shop but have a few servers that we'll likely never be able to virtualize, a few Windows phone servers with specialty cards installed and a couple other misc servers. So maintaining Commvault just for ~10 physical servers is kind of silly, although it also serves as my archiving to tape needs.

-Chad

[aporter]

One approach we have used is to schedule a recurring p2v task. One could then backup the resulting VM with Veeam.

[murdocmk]

I struggle with the scheduled p2v task approach because of the time involved in running a full p2v for every physical machine during every backup window. I know that solution can work in some specific scenarios, but as a general solution it's not adequate for most of the situations I've run into. Now, if you're using something that offers an "incremental" p2v, so that only changes in physical machines are synced with a VM copy, then that's a different story. That's the type of solution I'd love to see bundled into Veeam.

An "incremental"/block-based p2v to a VM which Veeam then backs up, with the appropriate tools to write that VM back to a physical machine (preferably with some kind of hardware independent restore capabilities).

[kjc3303]

Me too! Platespin offer this but at £222 per workload (server, non transferable) it don't come cheap.

[ERGUSER]

Hi Support,

Can I Use Veeam Backup & Replication, To Replicate Full Physical Server Running Windows 2008 Small Buisness Server (Retail), To HyperV 2008R2 Guest Env (Or Hyper-V2012 Guest Env)
If supported, If the physical server crashed, What can I expect regarding the windows activation process on the replicated host, when turning him on, Will it work so I can connect the users to the replicated server?


Thanks In Advanced,
ERGUSER

[Vitaliy S.]

Hello ERGUSER, Veeam does not backup/replication physical servers. Thanks!

[ERGUSER]

Hello ERGUSER, Veeam does not backup/replication physical servers. Thanks!

Hi Vitaliy S.,
Thanks For The Quick Reply,

So, If I P2V The Small Buiseness 2008 Server To Hyper-V Guest Env, Can I Replicate It To Another Hyper-V Guest Env On Another Server? What can I expect regarding the windows activation process on the replicated host, when turning him on, Will it work so I can connect the users to the replicated server?

Regards,
ERGUSER

[Vitaliy S.]

Yes, you can replicate it to another Hyper-V server. Cannot comment on Windows activation process, but I guess the behavior should be similar to just moving VM from one Hyper-V host to another manually.