Veeam Agent or File Shares backup ?

[NightBird]

Hello all,


I have a little question, what is the best practice to backup 65To of Windows Failover Cluster file server.

Use Veeam Agent, or File shares backup (about 200-250 shares) ?
But the main concern is the scanning/browsing of millions files in file share mode.

What do you recommend ?

Thanks

[vnikiforov]

Hello,

I think Veeam Agent is the way to go here. Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows in managed mode supports Windows File Server Failover Clusters, as long as it's the classic File Server role on clustered disks.
CSVs are excluded from agent backup, if you need CSVs backup, then, yes - file share backup is the option.

As for the number of files: Agent backup is image-level: incrementals track changed blocks and do not enumerate files.

Licensing-wise, file share backup consumes one instance per 500 GB of protected data, which puts 65 TB at roughly 130 instances. With the agent, each cluster node consumes one server instance.
In general, file share backup is intended for devices where you can't install an agent (e.g., NAS filers).

Due to the volume size, I'd also recommend to split 65 TB volume across a few cluster jobs (make sure jobs don't share volumes). A cluster job keeps a single backup chain for the whole cluster, so smaller jobs keep fulls and retries manageable. Just know that two jobs hitting the same agent will queue rather than run in parallel.
Also please take a note Microsoft doesn't support VSS operations on volumes larger than 64 TB

[NightBird]

Thanks for the reply Vladimir.

But files share backup is better for granular restore, isn’t it ? You can browse in time

[NightBird]

Here the file server shares backup is the recommended way ?
So agent or file

viewtopic.php?f=57&t=102198&start=0

[Nas]

With a Veeam Agent backup, you can still browse the folders and files granularly using the guest OS file restore - https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/agent ... tml?ver=13

[NightBird]

You're right and the main drawback is that file server mode (windows or linux) doesn't manage Windows Failover Cluster...

What I mean is then you have a NAS backup (instead of VM ou agent backup) the Veeam Explorer for file you can browse all your restore point (NAS backup).
With agent or VM backup you need each time to close Veeam Explorer, and reopen it with another restore point.

Of course I can use Veeam Enterprise Manager with guest indexing