replication and backup same VM at same time

[averylarry]

So this can sort-a work in Veeam 5, but I've been told that it's not supposed to work.

Will it work in Veeam 6? I find it difficult to imagine so many people with offsite replication that have no need of running a backup job (short and quick) during a replication job (offsite, takes a long time).

In case it doesn't exist in Veeam 6, consider this an enhancement request. I would like to be able to run a replication job across my WAN link and still be able to run a backup job on the same VM while the replication job is running. I regularly have replication jobs that will take longer than the window between backup jobs.

[Gostev]

Yes, it will work in Veeam 6. Thanks!

[averylarry]

This does not appear to work. Or maybe I didn't ask my question correctly.

I am currently running a replication of a certain VM. It's been awhile since the replica worked (I was waiting for v6). It will probably take more than a full day to sync.

Meanwhile, I'm trying to run a backup job that includes that same certain VM. This backup job is sitting there with the job running, all the other VMs successful, but this VM is "pending" because "VM is locked by another task".

I take this to mean that the VM which is being replicated will not be backed up until the replication finishes. Further, it appears that this backup job will wait indefinitely for the replication job to finish (I've waited awhile, but maybe it's a long timeout), which means all the VMs in the backup job will not run until the replication finishes.

[averylarry]

PS -- I love the v6 improvements. I don't want to sound negative -- I just was very excited about this feature since my WAN isn't likely to be able to keep up all the time, even with the rest of the v6 improvements.

[tsightler]

So you overall observation is correct, you cannot run two simultaneous jobs against the very same VM at the same time, the second job will skip that VM, and then wait indefinitely until first job finishes with that VM. However, you can configure the second job to have a "backup window". This will eventually timeout the second job, failing that particular VM. The job will then run again the next night, backing up all the other VMs and again waiting for that VM to become available. Once the first job finally finishes with the sync, the backup will continue normally on that VM.

[averylarry]

So everyone else just has great WAN speeds and this never comes up? I know snapshots aren't ideal -- but it shouldn't be that hard to have 2 snapshots for 2 separate jobs on the same VM. Stick some user warnings on it about performance degredation if needed.

Sometimes I have to increase the size of a virtual disk to accommodate for data growth. That puts a pretty big spike in the number of changed blocks for replication -- at least in v5. I haven't tested this in v6 yet.

Well -- it's too early to tell, so I won't complain too loudly. With the other improvements, I can hope that I'll be OK.

I figured the backup window is the workaround. But don't get me started on the limitation of Veeam's scheduling and retention policies.

[averylarry]

PS -- so far the VM that I thought would take more than a day -- it's (supposedly) at 37% finished after 2 hours 50 minutes. Doesn't look like it'll take nearly as long as I expected. If I'm reading the stats correclty, it looks like 11X traffic reduction for the WAN.

[tsightler]

Two snapshots aren't a big deal, but you can quickly get into sticky situations with multiple VSS calls overlapping, or other similar issues with pre-freeze/post-thaw scripts that weren't written with job overlap in mind. It was decided for now to simply have VMs patiently "wait", which is still far more elegant than V5. That does not mean that solutions to this issue might not appear at some point as of course this is occasionally an issue for many users.

[rvopat]

[merged]

I have been looking through the forums and Knowledgebase and i cant seem to find an answer for my questions.

We have 2 Veeam 6 enterprise servers - both VM's. 1. is located in DR site (named VBR2), and and there is a proxy in our production network(named VBR1). this server and proxy runs replica's only.

the 2nd enterprise server (VBR3) is located in our production network - this machine runs backups - currently it has no proxies associated with it.

1. Can we run a backup and a replication at the same time with one server running each job? - For example be replicating VM1, on VBR2 while that replica is running have a backup start on VBR3 for VM1.

1.a. Can 1 server run a backup and replica of the same machine at the same time? Example VBR2 is replicating VM1 in one job, while it is also backing it up in another job.

2. Can 2 separate veeam servers share a proxy? - VBR2 and VBR3 have access to VBR1(which only has proxy files installed)

3. If you are running a sure backup job which consists of VM1 and VM2, if you try and backup VM1 will it cause the backup to fail? OR if you are Backing up VM1 and you start a sure backup job consisting of VM1 and VM2 would it cause the backup to fail?

[Cokovic]

Can't give you an answer for question 1 and 1a. Never tried that.

2. Yes two Veeam servers can share the same proxy. But your proxy should have enough ressources to handle the workload.

3. As the backup job has a higher priority your backup job will not fail. Instead the Surebackup job will be stopped so that the backup can run. In the other case the backup job will continue to run and your SureBackup job won't start cause the files are in use by the backup job.

[tsightler]

2. Yes two Veeam servers can share the same proxy. But your proxy should have enough ressources to handle the workload.

Actually, while this might work OK, this is explicitly not supported with V6 (it's specifically mentioned in the release notes). There can be conflicts between operations as the two servers are not aware that they are sharing this resource and there is no coordination between them. The results can be "unpredictable", especially if the two servers attempt to use the same proxy to backup the same VM at the same time. If it breaks, you get to keep all of the pieces.

[Vitaliy S.]

While technically backing up same VMs with different Veeam B&R servers at the same should work, I wouldn't recommend doing this because of the reasons described by Tom above.

[Cokovic]

Sorry for that. My fault.

[dlieshout@client.nl]

Have a VM in 2 jobs. This VM is in a job for onsite backup and in a job for offsite backup. What will happen if occasionly the jobs run together? Is this no problem (because of the 2 snapshots Veeam will make) or are there any issues. This could happen when the 2 jobs are scheduled after each other (in time or Run After) and the first job will do an automatic Retry when it fails.