Veeam DR questions

[PiotrIr2]

Hello,

I’m planning to create cluster (4 nodes) with storage spaces direct (bitlocker, compression and deduplication enabled). On top of this I would like to use Veeam for backup and Disaster Recovery placed in Azure. Could you advise me following please?

1. Is this solution reliable and design does make sense? Any potential issues?
2. How long approximately will take to switch to DR.
3. How Azure charges for this DR? Is it only storage?
4. Is the VM ready to start or there is only disk which will need to be assigned to newly created machine?
5. What about fail back to the cluster, is it easy?
6. I never used Veeam so not sure how to calculate storage required for backup – could you advise?
7. Azure backup (DPM) is very expensive, we used it couple of times but eventually switched to Altaro what saved around 70% from our monthly bill. Is it similar with Veeam?
8. Is any document showing best practices on Veeam for this?
9. What Veeam licenses do I need?
10. Any advice about this design?

Thank you

[HannesK]

Hello,
and welcome to the forums.

1-4: it depends what technology you want to use and what RPO / RTO times you are aiming for. We don't have access to the hypervisor in Azure. That means, it will take some time to do a failover / restore from Azure Blob into Azure VMs. Time is had to estimate. It's "the cloud" and varies a lot on data center load. When you talk about bitlocker: inside the VM or are you talking about shielded VMs?

5: It's VM based. Pretty similar like failover. The restore button just changes from "Restore to Azure" to "Restore to Hyper-V"

6: I recommend talking to a partner. It will be impossible to guide you through everything on the forums. I always go with 50% data reduction (if you have 10TB source, you need 5TB for backup). Change rate per day at environments of your size: 5-7% usually fits (also apply 50% data reduction. I assume that you don't have 90% videos / pictures which don't allow data reduction).

7, 9 & 10: no idea. Please talk to a partner about pricing. https://www.veeam.com/buy-veeam-products-pricing.html (Note: we want to deliver the best products. Not the cheapest)

8: I'm not aware that someone compiled everything together. https://www.veeam.com/resource-library. ... gs[product][]= is a starting point.

The design looks something like this:
- have a proper (VPN) connection
- backup server runs in Azure to be able to recover in case your data center is not available
- backups are going on local disk formatted with REFS first.
- backups are copied to azure blob (capacity tier in copy mode https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backu ... ml?ver=100)
- restore to azure in case of disaster
- https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backu ... ml?ver=100
- backup in azure with Veeam Backup for Azure or Veeam Agent for Windows
- copy back to on-prem depending on the product you chose for Azure
- restore to Hyper-V on-prem https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backu ... ml?ver=100

I recommend that you download the software and use the quick start guide. https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backup/qsg_hyperv/

Best regards,
Hannes

[PiotrIr2]

Thank you Hannes,
Is any other could provider and technology which allows Veeam to replicate VM? I mean not restore from backup but just start it?

[HannesK]

Hello,
yes, there are several of them.

https://www.veeam.com/find-a-veeam-cloud-provider.html -> "Cloud Connect Replication" should give you only the ones who offer replication.

Best regards,
Hannes