Upgrading my Veeam Infrastructure

[ckbrou]

I need to upgrade my Veeam Infrastructure and would love to get some feedback on 3 scenarios. Right now I have a Physical Server running Veeam and each night 2 backup jobs run. 1 to a QNAP NAS and the other to a DD620 (I tried backup copy jobs to the DD620 but the transform took way too long). I keep 3 recent backups on the NAS and 30 days of backups on the DD620. The DD620 is offsite connected via 1 Gb link.

The Physical Veeam backup server is old and needs to replaced and the NAS and the DD620 are almost out of space. Here are the three scenarios I am entertaining:
1. Physical Server with local storage for the 3 recent copies. QNAP NAS offsite (1 Gb link) with backup copy jobs for 30 days. (I don't really need all 30 days - I would only keep 5 daily and 5 weekly backups in this scenario).
2. Physical Server with Local storage for the 3 recent copies. DD690 offsite (I have access to a used one for pretty cheap so cost isn't a factor). I would continue running a separate backup job to keep 30 days (weekly active fulls + forward incrementals). I assume backup copy jobs would not work still due to the time for the transforms.
3. Physical Server with local storage for the 3 recent copies. GFS copy to the cloud (Amazon S3 or Azure) over a 100 Mbps internet connection.

I would have to run some calculations yet to see if scenario 3 would make sense financially and if the bandwidth could support our change rate. With scenario 1 and 2 the data is copied off campus but it is still in the same city so that makes option 3 a little more appealing but it may get pricey???

Do any of the 3 solutions jump out to anyone as being the strongest? They all might work fine but would love some thoughts on why 1 might be better than the others.
Thanks!
Chad

[foggy]

Regarding the first one, you should also check whether QNAP is able to provide enough IOPS for transforms.

Just thought of a slightly different setup, consider having physical box as an offsite storage for backup copy jobs. This could be even the same box that is currently used for Veeam B&R, just switch Veeam to virtual and mount the NAS to it as a local backup storage for operational restores.

[ckbrou]

Foggy, I have really liked having my backup server being a physical server separate from my VMware environment and using direct SAN mode. Wouldn't I lose some performance if I switched Veeam to virtual? I also don't have a great way to expand local storage on my old backup server. There are just 6 SAS bays on that server and If my calculations are right I would need about 14TB of useable space to store my GFS copies (and that would leave zero room for growth). Even if I installed 4 TB drives in raid 6 I would only have about 2 TB for future growth.

I am currently leaning towards options #2 with the DD690. My 1 Gb offsite link is also used by the business during the day so my likelihood of keeping my backup traffic in my nightly window is probably best without the backup copy job. #3 is still on the table also. Would love to hear about some real world scenarios where people started sending a backup copy to the cloud, how easy it was to setup, and how competitive the cost was to hosting the backup copy on your own network.

[veremin]

You can perform rough estimation yourself.

Code: Select all

[Size of full backup * number of full backups  + size of increment * number of increments]/GB * price per GB

where number of fulls is equal to: 1 + number of GFS fulls; and number of increment to: the simple retention settings of backup copy job

Thanks.

[foggy]

Foggy, I have really liked having my backup server being a physical server separate from my VMware environment and using direct SAN mode. Wouldn't I lose some performance if I switched Veeam to virtual?

After switching Veeam B&R server to virtual, you can use hotadd transport mode to retrieve source VMs data directly from the storage via ESXi storage stack. Hotadd performance is typically comparable with the one of direct SAN access. However, only tests will show actual difference in performance in your particular environment.