Scenario Help

[kjc3303]

Good Afternoon, please ignore my ignorance of Veeam and VMWare as I am a newbie (attending VWware training in the new year)

I am currently in the process of budgeting for a new small virtulized network with DR and HA, I have been reading through a lot of Veeam\VMware documentation and would like to put what my conclusion is and how I think Veeam can work for me. Can the experts on here either confirm my understanding is correct or point me in the right direction.

Proposal

Site A (production)
2 x ESXI each with 2 VM's on each
above connected to SAN storage
Veem backup server connected direct to SAN with tape drive connected

Link 10mb lan extension cable

Site B (DR)
1 x ESXI server local storage equivalent to SAN




The software I think I need to achieve the Above\Below is VMWare Essentials plus and Veeam Essentials plus

Backup
Daily maybe bi-daily backup using Veeam to Veeam backup server which will be transferred to tape to take offsite overnight.

Replication
Near real time replication to local storage at DR site via LES10 connection.

What I am hoping to achieve is

File level recovery = Veeam backup
Disk Level = RAID 5
SAN Level = Veeam replication
VS level recovery = VMware Vmotion
ESXI level recovery = V motion
Site Level = Veeam replication
Both site level = Tape

Thanks in advance for any advise

Regards

Kev

[Gostev]

Hi Kev, looks good to me. If I were you I would drop tape backup in favor of offsite backup, but that's my preference.

Note that Veeam can provide not just VM file level recovery, but also entire VM recovery (including instant VM boot from backup files), guest OS file level recovery, and guest application item level recovery.

Thanks!

[kjc3303]

Gostev Thanks, would you recommend that I have the Veeam server at the DR site then or is it best to keep it plugged directly into the SAN?

[Gostev]

Source site is generally better.

[kjc3303]

Thanks again Gostev, been considering the offsite backup rather than tape the issue I have is that my DR site is relatively close (3 miles) to my Production site so think it would be better to have an tape backup for the event of a major disaster.

This leads me on to another question.

If I only had a copy of my backup on tape and both sites 'disappeared' would I just be able to buy new hardware(SAN and Servers) and restore the backups to a new esxi? Would I need to restore my veeam backupserver first?

[kjc3303]

Gostev, I have found the answer to the above in one of your previous posts

by Gostev » Wed Dec 01, 2010 7:28 pm

Just to further elaborate, extract.exe was designed to be archived to tapes along with VBK files for long-term storage purposes where you do not typically archive incremental backups, but only full backups. This is why extract.exe does not support restoring from VIB files. Likewise, it was not designed with emergency restores in mind, but rather with scenarios of restoring in a few years from now. This is why it does not support restoring to host directly.

For emergency restores, I recommend to simply have Veeam Backup setup handy, it takes under 5 mins to install new server if needed, and you can use any computer since we support pretty much any Windows OS starting from XP... if you can run extract.exe there, then you can install Veeam Backup there as well.

Then, you just do Import Backup and perform any type of restore, including Instant VM Recovery. And this is real win in case of emergency, because unlike restore to ESXi which will take hours, instant restore is... err... instant so it would be hard for extract.exe to match, even if it had capabilities of restoring directly to ESXi.