Planning to introduce Veeam to infrastructure

[rb51]

hi all,

I have been asked to review our backup environment (currently running Backup Exec 2010 R3 + tape libraries).

We will be soon adding a Dell DR4100 + expansion tray in our infrastructure which should provides us with around 35Tb raw space for backups (hopefully dedup+compression wil do a nicely job).

Backup data to Dell DR4100 then offload to tape during the day for off-site (maybe in the future stream data to a secondary site).

I would like to introduce Veeam for our VMs, and keep BE 2010 R3 for physical and iSCSI volumes.

Bit of background:

- Dell Equallogic SAN environment, ie., iSCSI
- Cisco 3950 switches backbone
- Around 120 active VMs. Some with iSCSI target directly attached (threfore only system vmdk for backup with Veeam).
- Quite a few SQL VMs with several vmdks attached spread over several datastores.
- 8x dual socket VMware ESX4.1U2 hosts (Dell Poweredge R710 128Gb RAM each). Enterprise license. We are also looking into upgrading to ESXi5.1 in the short term.
- Exchange is physical so OUT of the equation

I know this is quite raw info and I am also reading the Veeam user Guide VMware Environments v7.

In terms of design:

would we be okay to run the Veeam B&R server of a beefy VM or should we use a physical box?
We have replication running on some Tier1 VMs managed by our network provider which uses Veeam 6.5. On our side of the infrastructure we have 4x veeam proxies to help with the replication.

I would really appreciate comments and happy to provide further info.

Regards, ric

[veremin]

Hi, Ric.

Veeam backup server can be installed on any Windows-based machine you have in your environment: be it physical or virtual one. Though, if you’re willing to offload backup data to tapes with VB&R, it might be worth sticking to physical scenario, since using virtual backup server with tape appliances currently requires some tricks.

In case of physical backup server, you can also create a share disk, map it to your physical instance of VB&R and use as a target repository for configuration backup. Should any disaster situation happen (physical server goes down, for instance), all you would need to do is to install Veeam on any other virtual machine you have and import previously backed up configuration.

Moreover, you can also deploy virtual proxy and use in Hot-Add mode.

Don’t forget to utilize Application Aware Image Processing while backing up SQL VMs. AAIP is an ad-hoc mechanism, which allows VB&R to create transactionally consistent backup of a VM running VSS-aware applications (such as Active Directory, Microsoft SQL, Microsoft Exchange, Sharepoint) without powering them off. Furthermore, it ensures successful VM recovery, as well as proper recovery of all applications installed on the VM without any data loss and also it notifies applications about them being backed up.

Thanks.

[Vitaliy S.]

It doesn't matter where you decide to install your Veeam B&R server to, but I would recommend using physical machine as a proxy server in a Direct SAN mode for better job performance.

[rb51]

Hi Eremin, Vitaliy

Thank you for your replies....

Physical server:

- Which sort of spec would be recommended?

At the moment we have a physical server (R710 dual socket 16Gb), with 6x SAS connection to 2x tape libraries (4 + 2 drives). This server runs BE 2010 R3. Would I be able to install Veeam on this server and would it cope with both software running jobs to tape?

Would it be a possibility to have BE 2010 R3 jobs to grab the Veeam backups on the Dell DR4100 and put them on tape for offsite copy?

Thanks again in advance....

[veremin]

Would I be able to install Veeam on this server and would it cope with both software running jobs to tape?

If you’re going to use 7.0 tape functionality, you will have to delete Symantec drivers, stop corresponding services or uninstall the software as a whole. Otherwise, the tape jobs will fail.

Would it be a possibility to have BE 2010 R3 jobs to grab the Veeam backups on the Dell DR4100 and put them on tape for offsite copy?

To which machine will your tape library be connected? Thanks.

[rb51]

Understood, so same existing physical server is not an option then.

Would it be a possibility to have BE 2010 R3 jobs to grab the Veeam backups on the Dell DR4100 and put them on tape for offsite copy?

To which machine will your tape library be connected? Thanks.

Existing physical server running BE 2010 R3 will be kept connected to tape libraries

[Vitaliy S.]

Physical server:
- Which sort of spec would be recommended?

You can find these in the system requirements document, please take a look > http://www.veeam.com/veeam_backup_7_0_r ... tes_rn.pdf