Questions about offsite backup

[corbitech]

Hello,

The purpose of my post is to determine the feasibility of a topology supporting onsite/offsite backup and to get a rough idea of the hardware and software required. First, I should mention that I have not yet implemented Veeam in my company so I'm at the beginning of the learning curve. Second, I'm not a professional IT admin, but I'm fairly experienced with server hardware builds/maintenance and system admin tasks. My company is primarily a Windows shop at this point, so assume that I'll be using Windows Server 2012 or 2016 for OS and Hyper-V for virtualization.

I plan to have 2 physical sites. I'd like to place my primary servers in a data center (colocation facility) which I'll refer to as Site 1. Site 2 is my main office which also has server hosting infrastructure. Site 1 is where I plan to deploy most of my Veeam infrastructure. To be more specific, I plan to deploy most if not all components of Veeam Backup Essentials 9.5 on a single dedicated backup server with local (direct attached) storage. I haven't yet decided on a specific edition (Standard, Enterprise, Enterprise Plus), but any of these options is doable for me.

Now my questions begin with the issue of offsite backups. I know there are several options here. For example, I could outsource the offsite backups to a Veeam partner and pay a monthly fee for that. That is not the option I want to explore in this post. I'd like to know the general feasibility of using Site 2 (main office) as an offsite backup target.

1. Does the Enterprise Plus edition of VEEAM BACKUP ESSENTIALS product (which is targeted to small business) allow for me to use Site 2 as an offsite backup target? I believe that the full Veeam Backup & Replication (Enterprise Plus edition) provides this capability, but that product is currently beyond my budget. In particular, the "Built-in WAN Acceleration" feature seems to be a critical aspect of making this work effectively, so I wanted to make sure that the VEEAM BACKUP ESSENTIALS product was not handicapped in any way which would preclude it from being used to backup to Site 2 over WAN.

2. Assuming #1 above is doable, what would the required HARDWARE components look like for Site 2 (offsite Veeam backup target). On the hardware side, I'd expect to Site 2 (offsite backup target) to have a server with lower specs than Site 1 (main Veeam backup target). In terms of capacity of local direct attached storage, Veeam servers at Sites 1 and 2 would be equivalent, but I'd expect Site 2 Veeam server to require less network bandwidth, RAM, and CPU capabilities. Am I correct?

3. Assuming #1 above is doable, what would the required SOFTWARE licensing look like for Site 2 (offsite backup target). I assume I'll have to license Windows Server OS for Veeam backup server at Site 2. I believe that I would NOT have additional Veeam licensing costs for Veeam backup server at Site 2. My general understanding is that Veeam is licensed per processor of the Hyper V instance that is being backed up. Am I correct?

4. Assuming #1 above is doable, what would the required Veeam SOFTWARE components look like for Site 2 (offsite Veeam backup target). This is where my limited Veeam knowledge is crippling my early decision-making. I understand that there are many components to the Veeam backup suite. Furthermore, I know that the primary Veeam backup server at Site 1 (data center) will have most, if not all, of these components installed on a single dedicated backup server. However, at Site 2 I currently don't know what specific Veeam components need to be installed on the offsite Veeam backup target to make this scenario work. Thoughts?

Any feedback on these issues would be appreciated.

Thanks,

AK

[Shestakov]

Hello Ashok and welcome to the community!

1. VBR Essentials have same feature set as the regular license, so you are good here.

2. Since you are going to use server on Site 2 as a repository, you need to check system requirements of the repository.

3. You don`t need a license for the repository.

4. On a Windows repository, Veeam Backup & Replication deploys a Veeam Data Mover (when you add a Windows-based server to the product console, Veeam Backup & Replication installs a set of components including the Data Mover Service on that server). When any job addresses the backup repository, the Data Mover Service on the backup repository establishes a connection with the source-side Data Mover Service on the backup proxy, enabling efficient data transfer over LAN or WAN.

Thanks!

[corbitech]

Shestakov, your response was right on target. Thanks for the info!

[Shestakov]

You are welcome Ashok,
Once you have a question don`t hesitate asking!

[WRS2200]

Indeed this response was right on target. This was helpful in my situation as well. Thanks for the post guys.