Which VBR service to use

[McKITGuys]

Hi all,

High level overview questions: we have an old Sonicwall CDP box that does file level continuous backup - it uses a VSS writer to capture changes to files and these are then sent to the backup box. It is good if you only want to backup certain sets of folders on a server (we used it for both full server backup nightly but then during the day, their "CDP" service was only capturing changes to certain folders). It was really handy for restoring a single document for a user.

But we switched to VBR some time ago - we routinely restore files for users using the "Guest files restore" feature to pull out a document from a nightly backup. But as you can guess, that does not work if the user created or modified a document during the day and deleted it the same day.

Reading about the Veeam CDP, not the same animal as the Sonicwall CDP - it is continuously backing up an entire VM or so it seems - which is kinda overkill for us given that we only want "during the day" backups of a very small subset of a server - the users "work files" area on the server (I also think we are not licensed for VBR CDP as we have an "Essentials Plus" license).

Is there a way to do the same as the Sonicwall CDP within Veeam? Or is it really just creating another backup job and running the job "every x minutes"? I am worried that if this is done by SAN snapshots that doing something every few minutes is going to give problems on the SAN.

Albert

[Mildur]

Hi Albert

Veeam CDP is for replicating VMs to a second destination. You can't use it for restoring Guest OS Files.
You could use our File Share Backup. Let the File Share Backup Job run "Continuously" or every 15 minutes.
https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backu ... ml?ver=110

Please be aware that the license requirements of File Share Backup is 1 VUL instance per 500GB Frontend Data.
Protected frontend data below 500GB require a VUL license.

Best,
Fabian

[McKITGuys]

Thanks. Is the file share backup available for an Essentials Plus license?

[Mildur]

It's available for all instance based licenses (VUL) and also the community edition.

Best,
Fabian

[McKITGuys]

1) we are using the old sockets based license (6 sockets/3 hosts) - does this use up a socket? or does it need a different type of license (which we would not have by default)

[Mildur]

Your socket license comes with 6 free gifted instance licenses. They can be used for the file share backup job. 6 instances allows you to backup 3 TB frontend capacity.

If you have more than 3TB to backup with a file share backup job, you must use a VUL. I suggest to run a test first to check if File Share backup jobs can fulfill your requirement.

Best,
Fabian

[McKITGuys]

The file share is only about 100GB so well under the limit. I did get the process started - I figured out that I have to first add the server under "managed servers" (even though this server is being backed up as a whole image vm under another job) and then I could create a file share job.

It chokes with an error regarding licensing so I thought it must be a license limit error.

I could not find a link on how to set up a file share backup to a Windows server.

I think this type of backup would provide what we are looking for - periodic through the day backup of a very small slice of files on a server.

[mkh]

have you thought about using shadow copies instead ?

[McKITGuys]

No - honestly have never thought of that. Have never used them. Have always relied upon backup services...will have to try them. Thanks for the suggestion.

[McKITGuys]

Your socket license comes with 6 free gifted instance licenses. They can be used for the file share backup job. 6 instances allows you to backup 3 TB frontend capacity.

If you have more than 3TB to backup with a file share backup job, you must use a VUL. I suggest to run a test first to check if File Share backup jobs can fulfill your requirement.

Best,
Fabian

This seems to have sorted itself out - it threw an error on the first test but somehow now the licensing is working. I still get the regular error that somehow licensing gets mucked up - Veeam finds old servers that we no longer have and adds them to the socket list and then the new ones cannot get a license. Went through a long process with support to try to resolve it but they could never track it down. That is why I am going to just wipe the server and start over.

[mkh]

No - honestly have never thought of that. Have never used them. Have always relied upon backup services...will have to try them. Thanks for the suggestion.

for file server restores shadow copies are really nice.
they also give your more IT savvy users the ability to do self restore

just make sure to set schedules for shadow copies that suit your business
the default is 07.00 and 12.00, which in my opinion isn't the most useful.
i mostly do 9, 11, 13, 15, 17
I tend to make a separate disk for shadow copies, as MS recommends

[McKITGuys]

Without digging for the MSFT docs, I would have thought that something like Shadow Copies would be enabled for a drive/folder and then from thereon in, if a change was about to happen for a file, it would make make a copy of the original before writing new data over top of it. Is that what this does?

I am familiar with the VSS services that backups use to take a snapshot of the drive/folder before doing backups and then committing any changes after the backups.

So wondering if I am even thinking of the right thing as per your previous notes.

[mkh]

shadow copies in windows server are not continuos, the schedule you set controls the times when you can restore back to