Replicating Backups Offsite

[pawel]

Hello,

I am currently evaluating Veeam for our very small virtual environment. It consists of the VMware essentials package 1 production ESXi host with 2 VMs, and 1 backup ESXi host stored off-site. The off-site host doesn't need HA or anything like that, I just need to to have sitting around if our entire production environment gets torn up by hurricane, fire, criminal, etc.

I've been looking at using NAS storage for this and using the NAS appliance to handle off-site replication of the backup data. But the more I read the more I'm starting to think that the following method using a Windows host would work better:

http://helpcenter.veeam.com/backup/80/v ... ackup.html

I have a couple of questions for this scenario.

Do I need an additional license on the offsite windows "server" (I'll likely use a Windows 7 Pro machine)? Or does my one socket license cover this (I'm assuming they are referring to the ESXi sockets, which I only have one in production)? Do I need to install the entire Veeam Backup & Replication suite on the off-site "server" or is there a module somewhere that I can load so I can add it to my proxy list?

Second, is this really the best way to do it? I have a decent budget for NAS (maybe even SAN) but really I'm looking to the simplest most efficient solution.

Currently we have around 2TB of production data. That will likely double over the next year. Our WAN link is around 10Mb/s. Will this completely overwhelm the WAN link or if I do the initial backup with the off-site server on site then run the incremental backups after that over WAN will I be good if we only add 1GB or so of data a day? How often should I make full backups as opposed to just having incremental backups?

My ultimate goal is to have a full archive of all data for the last year. After that year I can take the Veeam backup and archive it (tape, another NAS, etc). Does using the method described above make sense with those goals in mind?

RSYNC seems to be another option, and as I understand if I have a huge 2TB .vbk file and additional 4GB.vib files generated once a day will RSYNC properly transfer only what is needed without using insane amounts of CPU storage? I am also not well versed in Linux so I was hoping to stay away from it unless I found a NAS appliance that had decent support for it.

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated. I know this topic has been covered on these forums quite a bit but many of the threads are old and some of the newer ones I could fine don't go in to much detail using the proxy method. Thanks!

[Shestakov]

Hello pawel,

Making offsite backup of 2 TB infrastructure with just 10 Mbps looks tough. I would rather backup online and backup copy data to the DR site. It also brings additional reliability to your backup infrastructure.
Since transferring 2 TB over 10Mbps link can take forever (around 55.6 hours to be exact), it`s recommended to use WAN acceleration that helps optimize data transfer over the WAN.

Do I need an additional license on the offsite windows "server" (I'll likely use a Windows 7 Pro machine)? Or does my one socket license cover this (I'm assuming they are referring to the ESXi sockets, which I only have one in production)? Do I need to install the entire Veeam Backup & Replication suite on the off-site "server" or is there a module somewhere that I can load so I can add it to my proxy list?

The product is licensed per physical CPU socket of "source" hypervisor host (where protected virtual machines reside). Destination hosts for replication and migration jobs do not need to be licensed.
You don`t need to install Veeam B&R suite on the offsite repository, just add backup repository and needed components will be installed automatically.

Will this completely overwhelm the WAN link or if I do the initial backup with the off-site server on site then run the incremental backups after that over WAN will I be good if we only add 1GB or so of data a day?

Yes, it`s recommended approach to seed the initial full backup on DR site and then map incrementals to it.

How often should I make full backups as opposed to just having incremental backups?

Depends on your company`s policy. However, we recommend to do Active full monthly for Forward incremental and once in 2 months for Reversed incremental backup methods.

My ultimate goal is to have a full archive of all data for the last year. After that year I can take the Veeam backup and archive it (tape, another NAS, etc). Does using the method described above make sense with those goals in mind?

Do you need to keep backups of all days of the year and then copy all of them to tapes? It`s totally possible if you have enough storage space. If you are interested in keeping monthly/quarterly/yearly backups, please consider GFS retention.

Thank you.

[pawel]

Thanks!

Just to be clear I have to install the entire Veeam package on both ends? There isn't a simple module that just does the WAN accelerator on the DR site?

I plan to use a 512GB SSD for the WAN accelerator as recommended by the documentation. I'm hoping that might give me a boost in getting that much data over the WAN since it can be efficient in which data it sends.

If I have to do a full backup monthly and have the WAN accelerator at both ends, will the full backup have to replicate over WAN or will the target server be able to create a full backup from the data it already has on it? I can't possibly transfer 2TB over the connection we have, so I'm curious how to best handle the full backups monthly.

Do you need to keep backups of all days of the year and then copy all of them to tapes? It`s totally possible if you have enough storage space. If you are interested in keeping monthly/quarterly/yearly backups, please consider GFS retention.

I would like a DR plan that allows me to keep every email and every file for 7 years. To do that I was hoping I could do 1 year incremental backups (looks like I'll have to do a full backup monthly) which replicate automatically using the WAN accelerator. Is GFS only available for the backup option and not the replication option? Under the replication option I only have the amount of restore points to keep.

[Gostev]

If I have to do a full backup monthly

Backup Copy jobs do not have an option to perform full backup at any schedule, they are forever incremental.

Is GFS only available for the backup option and not the replication option? Under the replication option I only have the amount of restore points to keep.

Correct. Replicas are not intended for data archival, you should be using backups for that purpose.

[foggy]

Just to be clear I have to install the entire Veeam package on both ends? There isn't a simple module that just does the WAN accelerator on the DR site?

You do not need full Veeam B&R installation at both ends. All Veeam B&R components (proxies, repositories, WAN accelerators, etc.) can be deployed and managed via a single instance.

If I have to do a full backup monthly and have the WAN accelerator at both ends, will the full backup have to replicate over WAN or will the target server be able to create a full backup from the data it already has on it? I can't possibly transfer 2TB over the connection we have, so I'm curious how to best handle the full backups monthly.

Backup copy is always incremental, no periodic fulls. If you enable GFS to offload monthly backups, all GFS restore points will be created from data that is already stored offsite, no additional traffic is required.

[dellock6]

Adn to be even more specific, at DR site for this purpose you need to deploy the WAN Accelerator and the Repository components.