VEEAM across two small offices

[jkelleyus]

We have a larger VMWare ESXi HA installation with VEEAM enterprise running at our main site, and it works well. Recently we virtualized at a second smaller site with an additional ESXi host (running it's own VCenter). Our WAN is painfully slow.

Our smaller site has been using VMDR and they're unhappy with it (as compared to VEEAM). We do not want to incur the cost of another VEEAM license and infrastructure for the smaller site.

I've looked at the VEEAM website and cannot determine if there is a way to utilize our larger ESXi/VEEAM setup for the smaller site. Ideally, we would want to back up to a NAS on their end. Is there a way to do this without crossing the WAN?

Thanks,

John

[Gostev]

Hi John, this will be possible to achieve without Veeam infrastructure in the smaller site with the next release only (v6). With the current version, if you want to backup locally in that remote site, you need Veeam installed there. But, please note that we do not charge for Veeam installs - you can install as many Veeam servers as your want using the same license file. The key thing is not to exceed total count of licensed CPU sockets across all installs (Enterprise Manager will take care of monitoring and reporting this for you). So, in your case, all you need to do is buy additional amount of sockets to cover socket count of ESXi in remote site, get the new license key (with additional sockets added), and use that key to deploy Veeam infrastructure in your remote site. And Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager will give you single pane of glass across your multiple Veeam installs. Thanks.

[jkelleyus]

Thanks for the info. I am currently using (according to our Enterprise Manager) four of six licensed sockets at our larger site. Does this mean we're good to go on the smaller one?

We would just need to bring up a new instance of VEEAM backup on the small-office side? They only run one ESXi host while the main site runs two in an HA configuration.

Thanks,

John

[Gostev]

Yes, you are good then, no need for anything else. Yes, just spin up a new Veeam instance in remote site in some existing Windows VM, and setup a backup job to run in virtual appliance mode, backing up to whatever local target at that remote site. Just remember to register the new Veeam instance in the Enterprise Manager for consolidated management, monitoring and reporting. Thanks.