Please take a look at the link below that shows the basic Veeam design I came up with Veeam Design
My Production site and DR site are connected across a 10 gig link
I want to use a single Physical Windows Server to act as a Direct SAN proxy to my production Nimble storage. This same server will also have access through iSCSI to the Nimble array in my DR site which will act as my backup repository. This physical server will be housed in the Production data center. This setup will be used for both backup and replication. Two questions:
If I am just doing backup and replication from my Production array (source) to my DR array, is it true that I only need one proxy as shown?
Are any of these valid reasons to have a second proxy?
A. The offsite backup copy job to the Exagrid. I know the Exagrid can host the data mover service.
B. If I also want to do backup or replication from my DR site to Production. There are only 4 VMs in my DR site so there is not a lot of data to backup/replicate back to Production. I might just replicate these 4 VMs using Nimble replication, not Veeam replication
C. My Production site goes down and I need a proxy at the DR site for some reason. I believe with Veeam 9.5 which has Nimble integration that I can do restores using Direct SAN mode from snapshots. I still might need a proxy in the DR site to do these restores if my Production proxy is not available
I know additional proxies can be used to distribute load and speed up backups. In my case, with just 45 VMs and 6TB of data, one beefy physical server in Direct SAN mode should do the trick. If I deployed a second proxy for this purpose it would have to be virtual (no extra hardware laying about) so I would need to use hot-add or network mode which is not ideal.
Basically, your last paragraph says it all. Provided you are able to meet the backup window with just a single proxy - you do not need a second one in the production site (unless for the case the proxy itself fails for some reason). The proxy on the DR site is required for more optimal replication data transfer between sites (otherwise uncompressed data will be sent) and in case you want to do cross-site backups (point 2B above). In case you lose the production site completely, you will also need a Veeam B&R instance in DR site to perform restores.
With a 10 gig link between sites and Direct SAN access, I am sure I will not need another proxy to handle the load. You do make two good points about the need for a proxy in my DR site so I will standing up a virtual backup proxy there
I will need one DR in case the proxy in production goes down
I will need on in DR if I want to backup/replicate from DR to production
One physical proxy in production and one virtual proxy in my DR site should do the trick
Thanks for the assistance