Veeam 7.0 copying to datadomain (DD160) over WAN

[npbernhardt]

Trying to think through how I want this deployment to work.

We were using Veeam at our Production Colo, and backing up to Tier 3 in our SAN (3TB drives). This works great, the jobs run pretty quick and I have few issues. I'm looking to begin replicating (at least) my monthly backups. I've got a set of jobs that run once per month, they're Reverse Incremental, but they're really run just to use the option to run a full backup and only scheduled once per month. The result is that every month I get a big new vbk file that I copy over our WAN (~50mbps link) to our HQ (where I work) and park that file on a disk that then goes off-site for storage. There's 100 miles between our HQ and Production Colo, so manually swapping drives and tape isn't in the cards.

Recently, I added in a DD160 to our HQ. In addition to some NAS functions, I'm intending to use it as a dumping ground for our monthly backups that are coming out of veeam.

The plan is to dupe every monthly backup from our Production Colo SAN to the DD160, and to only retain 3 months of full backups on the Production Colo SAN. We'll keep 12 months worth of monthly backups on the DD160 and copy off yearly backups to stand-alone disk/tape.

What is the best way to accomplish this? I can mount a CIFS share on my DD160 directly from our backup server (which is in Production colo) and have it copy straight to the DD160, but I'm thinking I'm better off with a new Linux based Backup Repository that mounts the DD160 via NFS, which could expose DD160 volume to Veeam. I suspect this will perform much more reliably than copying via CIFS, but am curious what folks think.

Is there some other better design I should be using? If this works well, I'll likely start replicating our nightly backups (which are Reverse Incremental, high compression and locally optimized).

[foggy]

Nick, have you heard of a new Backup Copy job type available in just released Veeam B&R v7? I think the best design for what you're trying to implement would be setting up a Windows server in your HQ to serve as a proxying server (and WAN acceleartor as well) with DD share mounted to that server, adding it as a Windows backup repository to Veeam B&R, and then utilizing backup copy jobs targeting that repository. That will provide optimal transfer over WAN link, required GFS retention you're after as well as would not require secondary jobs against production VMs just to have monthly backups to offload.

[npbernhardt]

So, assuming that I don't have the licensing for Enterprise Plus, what's my best option?

The WAN acceleration does look promising, but I can't buy anything like that until Jan (budget cycles), so does that leave me in position where NFS into DD160 and then setting up a copy job is my best option?

[veremin]

So, assuming that I don't have the licensing for Enterprise Plus, what's my best option?

Typically, NFS provides more reliability than CIFS does. So, in this case, I’d prefer mounted NFS drive to CIFS share.

(which are Reverse Incremental, high compression and locally optimized).

If you’re going to copy these files to deduplication appliance, kindly, set compression to “dedup-friendly” level or disable it at all; or, otherwise, the given device will slow down the process with unsuccessful attempts to deduplicate highly-compressed data.

Thanks.

[Gostev]

Backup Copy jobs are available in any product edition. They do not require WAN acceleration, and can operate without one (which is a default setting).