Reminder on proper Veeam and vCenter VM backup - part deux

[virtualwatts]

I asked for the thread references -
I got these two (Thank you Gostev):

>>Can I backup the vCenter Server - http://www.veeam.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=4704
Which explains adding the vCenter server host to Veeam separately under the IP of the host.

For the first option we cannot add our ESXi server because it already exists. We get a duplicate server error from Veeam.
Our Veeam server has all of our ESXi servers loaded already under the vCenter Cluster. I have seen this reference before and because Veeam generates an error when we try it I thought there might be another solution.

Any other options?

>>And

>>Best way of protecting the Veeam server - http://www.veeam.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=4081
Which suggests either
don't back it up, separate the SQL server and rebuild the guest VM from scratch, reinstall all of the software, etc
or
back itself up (no vss) and use a crash consistent recovery
or
create a second Veeam install and remotely backup the server

One of our reasons for having VMware is to rapidly restore a guest VM without having to perform installs and re-configure. The first choice undermines that architecture.
Kind of like the remote DR solution, we will test with our limited network connectivity. This might help our DR solution as well.

Anybody have experience with the second choice - crash consistent recovery? That seems straightforward and possible for our infrastructure, will setup a test for that.

Thanks
Rick

[joergr]

Backup vCenter server and veeam server just like you would backup anything else but disable any vss triggers (no vmware quiescense, no veeam vss). Result is, as you already mentioned, crash consistent state. Which will be OK in 98-99% of all cases (for THESE two special servers). So don´t get me wrong, i would NOT recommend that way to an AD or exchange server with tons of loads on it.

After that job i´d suggest you add and run a surebackup job to be absolutely sure it worked OK. Schedule it. And you should be good to go.

Best regards,
Joerg

[Gostev]

Hi Rick, is there any reason why we could not continue posting in the existing topics discussing these questions (referenced above), in order to have all information consolidated instead of having a bunch of duplicate topics? This was the reason why I locked the topic where I provided you these links.

As for vCenter backup, you did not read the topic I provided carefully - you must be adding ESXi host by IP address, and not by name, then it will add fine.

Joerg somes it up correct, super lightly loaded SQL can be backed up without application-aware processing enabled.

Thanks!