VEEAM BAckup inside a VM

[cbarth]

Hi,
I just read that VEEAM is supported within a VM.
I have to backup 13 ESX Hosts and I worry a litte about networking performance when using a VM.
Has anyone problems with that. My currently VEEAM server has 4x 1 GB NICs bundled in a LACP Channel. Same on my NAS where I save the Backups.

When I use a VM I can use a VMXNET3 Adapter but I'am not sure wether this is fast enough to backup all my hosts in the same time of a LACP Channel?
Has anyone experience about that?

cheers
Carsten

[Vitaliy S.]

Hello Carsten,

Actually, traffic data flow depends on the job mode you choose. If you're running VBR server in the a virtual machine using Virtual Appliance backup mode, in this case Veeam uses SCSI hot-add capability of ESX to attach disks of a backed up VM to the Veeam Backup & Replication VM. In this mode, VM data is retrieved directly from storage through the ESX I/O stack, instead of going through the network stack for better performance.

Taking into consideration that you have configured LACP on the your host's NICs/switches/NAS and use VMXNET 3 driver for your VMs, you should be able to use all available network bandwith to backup VMs, however please note that backup speed depends on many variables (source/target datastore performance etc.), so I would recommend to setup a test job and see how it works for you. Besides, I would avoid running lots of concurrent backup jobs, as it might put a heavy stress upon your production and Veeam backup server.

Thanks!