Setting Up Veeam Backup Server On Workstation Machine?

[EddyChong]

Greetings. This is my first post in Veeam Forum.

I have a question regarding setting up Veeam Backup Server on a workstation. This is the first time I come across this question due to budget constraint from client. I've never setup in workstation before therefore I am very much appreciate if anyone could lights me up.

Customer would like to backup 8 VMs (ESX) only. It is a small environment.

Again, $$ constraint so client is considering to buy a workstation (DELL Optiplex XE i5/i7 processor) with Win 7 SP1 64bit installed. I personally don't think there is pro of using a workstation (never thought of). But one con I could think of is less number of cores offered in workstation processor (i5/i7) means less concurrent processing.

Well, based on the official DELL information it only supports 4Gb memory max. Yet, Veeam backup processing is memory intensive as far as I know. (please correct me if i'm wrong).

Is there any pros and cons other than what I thought? And any recommendations?

Thanks
Eddy

[EddyChong]

My bad, the workstation can support more than 4Gb memory.

So my question is, is the following hardware specs able to support the environment? (8VM, sizing unknown yet)
Dell Optiplex XE2
Processor: 1 x Intel® Core™ i7 (4770S)
Memory: 16 Gb
Disk: 2 TB

Also is there any difference for windows 2008 r2 over win 7 sp1? Win7 is listed in the compatible list in the release note though.

Thanks
Eddy

[Vitaliy S.]

Hello Eddy,

Our general recommendation is to use server hardware for a Veeam backup deployment, however Win 7 will work just fine. Please review our system requirements on supported platforms. If you have limited budget, then why not install Veeam backup console on one of the VMs hosted on your production ESXi hosts? In this case you would be able to use HotAdd mode, which is faster than network mode that you will be forced to use with physical Veeam workstation.

As to the hardware specification then it looks good, though I'm not sure you will need 16 GBs of RAM to process 8 VMs, minimal hardware requirements should be enough.

Thank you!

[EddyChong]

Hi Vitaliy,

Thanks for your reply. I have thought of that too, deploy in vm to leverage on hot add mode.

Then when I come to thought of using the workstation as a backup repository, I still see I have to transfer my backup image through network. If using this setup, would it still better performance compare to pure network mode (workstation as backup server and repository)

Thanks
Eddy

[Vitaliy S.]

You can use this server as a repository, that's correct. It's hard to say what would be the difference between pure network mode and hotadd + network, but I think it should be comparable on incremental runs and different on full job passes. If you decide to install every backup role on the same server, then 16 GBs is still more than required.

[EddyChong]

Yes. Noted. In fact the specs are provided by client, would discuss with client again.

Many thanks.
Eddy