Veeam backup and restore from remote site.

[itlad]

Hello, great site , hope you can help me with problem below.

I've been tasked with migrating 30+ VM's from remote offices back to the main office.

The remote offices have a sinlge Vmware host with a free licensed version of ESXi4 installed
The main office has an ESXi5 essentials plus licensed 3 host cluster, backed by a SAN

I've deployed Veeam essentials backup server on a VM in main office, a Veeam backup proxy server in each remote office, a Veeam storage repository in main office, and a NAS which can be used as a Veeam backup repository in the remote site.

Due to poor WAN bandwidth and some very very large VM's Veeam replication is not suitable.
So I've chosen to take the first 'seed' backup of all remote VM's to NAS, then ship the NAS back to base.
Following that I will import the VM's into Veeam local repository, then run a 'delta' backup of remote VM's again, using the initial seed.

I'm only about to test this process now but has anyone actually done this successfully? Can anybody seen any flaws with this or give any advice?

Also,on another note, can anybody tell me whether veeam backups up snapshots by default?

Many thanks

[Cokovic]

You cant take a backup of your VMs with Veeam running on a free ESXi host cause the vStorage API is not available in the free version. Here are some more infos on that.

[foggy]

You cant take a backup of your VMs with Veeam running on a free ESXi host cause the vStorage API is not available in the free version. Here are some more infos on that.

Other than that, your scenario looks good.

Also,on another note, can anybody tell me whether veeam backups up snapshots by default?

No, snapshots are not backed up and get consolidated into a single flat file during backup. Moreover, in case of existing snapshots, CBT could sometimes not work for VMs that have one or more snapshots before backup start (VMware limitation). Before running backup and replication jobs, it is recommended to delete VM snapshots, so that the job can enable CBT on all processed VMs.

However, if you need to migrate VM along with its snapshots, you could use the VM Copy job to copy the entire VM folder to the target location and register it in vSphere.

[itlad]

You cant take a backup of your VMs with Veeam running on a free ESXi host cause the vStorage API is not available in the free version. Here are some more infos on that.

Thanks,
My mistake anyway -I am new to this environment and was mistaken in saying we use the 'free' version of ESXi in the remote offices.
Turns out there are licensed copies there so this is no longer an issue

[itlad]

However, if you need to migrate VM along with its snapshots, you could use the VM Copy job to copy the entire VM folder to the target location and register it in vSphere.

Hi Foggy,

There are a number of VM's with Snapshots, and those snapshots need to be migrated too because they're SW developers VM's and they use snapshots to roll back changes.
I've now looked into Veeam Copy job a bit more now and it seems to be the best option.
My only concern with the copy job is about capturing differences since the copy - can you take a differential backup of a source VM and apply it to a VM that has been copied, much like you'd do witha Veeam backup?

Thanks

[Vitaliy S.]

VM copy jobs do not track changes, only backup and replication jobs do.

[itlad]

Hi again

I've now got a backup of all the remote site VM's taken to NAS
I have shipped that NAS back to base and configured it with an IP on the local LAN

I can see the backups on the CIFS share but when I go to restore it won't work because it's looking for the backup repository with remote network IP
If it was possible to change the shared folder path of the backup repository object this might not be such a problem.

Any ideas?
Thanks

[dellock6]

You can register the NAS as a new repository and then use the Map Backup function to point to the already existing backup files.

[itlad]

Thanks dellock6 - but the only place i can see to map the backup is when creating the backup in the first place.

Do you mean I should edit the backup job properties to point to new NAS object now?

[itlad]

Thanks dellock6 - but the only place i can see to map the backup is when creating the backup in the first place.

Do you mean I should edit the backup job properties to point to new NAS object now?

Ah yes I figured it out now - and have a restore running ok..... Cheers

[itlad]

One other problem I'm having is that the VBM meta data file for one of the backups is blank, and 0KB in size (despite job completing ok)

Does this mean I cannot use these backups for restores?

That's 100GB of backups which I won't fit through the WAN connection,
and don't want to have to ship the NAS back to remote office again...

Surely there's another way of getting Veeam to recognise them?

Thanks

[dellock6]

If you lost your VBM you can recreate it from scratch, ThomasMc (a great contributor of this forum) has wrote a cool powershell script in his forum:

http://vpowercli.wordpress.com/2011/12/ ... m-scratch/

Take a look at it!

[Gostev]

Just keep in mind that you cannot create VBM file from backup file set alone. This PowerShell script requires connection to Veeam server, and configuration database with the corresponding job still present. Thanks!

[itlad]

Thanks Luca

I installed veeam powershell component and pasted the powershell commands in but am getting the errors below after I specify the VBK file

[itlad]

Just keep in mind that you cannot create VBM file from backup file set alone. This PowerShell script requires connection to Veeam server, and configuration database with the corresponding job still present. Thanks!

Thanks Gostev

I actually ran powershell from the Veeam server itself, and the corresponding backup job still exists in Veeam, but I get the errors below

[Vitaliy S.]

Itlad, please avoid posting error log snippets as it is described when you click New Topic. If you have any technical problem with the product please contact our support team directly. Also please post all PowerShell related questions on the PS community forums. Thanks!

[ThomasMc]

Seth wrote that script so all credit should go to him also if you have any issues just post a comment on my site as I'm certain;

a) its unsupported by Veeam
b) get a response from Seth

[dellock6]

Ops, sorry about that...

[ThomasMc]

Not a problem Luca, I only spotted this thread when I seen some clicks coming from it and thanks for the linkage(been very lazy with the blog in recent months lol)

[dellock6]

Ehehe, so since I created new visitors for you, it's time to write again on your blog

[daphnis]

Hi all, I'm not sure if this is an appropriate place for this, but it is closest to the scenario I'm about to propose.

The OP posted essentially what I am looking to do:

-We are a managed service provider and run Veeam B&R 6.1 with Enterprise features. We use this at our data center to backup all our VMs that include those for our internal use, and those of our clients. All these are hosted on 6 ESXi machines and a vCenter server to manage them all. The Veeam server has a direct SAN connection to the storage of these VMs, and the Veeam server itself sits internally on its own backup repository. It acts as its own backup proxy. All these VMs are located on different vLANs but all physical hardware is in one central location on Gb Ethernet.
-We'd like to extend our Veeam usage to be the sole backup provider of ALL our clients with VMs.
-The clients in question are located in remote physical sites to which we have persistent VPN tunnels established.
-The clients with VMs needing backup with Veeam are running Windows 2008 Hyper-V.
-Many of them are on slow WAN links. Because of this, we'd like to seed load any VM from such a client and take incrementals from there forward.
-Clients have no need for local VM backup since we manage their entire infrastructure, but we need to be able to restore everything from full VMs to files to application items if necessary (U-AIR Exchange, SQL, and AD are necessary).
-I would plan to have the physical host for these VMs to server as the local proxy by default unless we discover this is taxing the host to the point that it interferes with the guest VMs.
-All client servers are accessible from the Veeam B&R server and it has enough storage space and CPU/RAM to handle concurrent uploads from multiple source servers.

I guess my question is since this scenario is not like many WAN requests, how does Veeam work in situations like this? My searches on the forums here don't really address this and I am still learning how to fully manage the product, which I find to be great. If anyone can point me to specific articles or forum posts about this, I would be most grateful. Thank you