Back destination and upload to cloud

[guitarfish]

Presently I have a couple VMware hosts at remote sites. I backup the guest VMs (Win Server 2012) with Veaam 7. The backups are stored locally on a NAS, and replicated offsite to HQ nightly. I am preparing to virtualize our HQ, probably two hosts, two VMs on each. I have a couple questions.

1 – Storage
The QNAP NAS I use has dual gigabit LAN connections, but it’s still kinda slow. Restoring a 100GB VM takes about an hour. I recall reading somewhere that using another Windows Server as a backup destination was preferable to a NAS. True? Our total data at HQ isn’t that much, maybe 300GB. We aren’t in a position for high end storage, like a SAN, etc.

2 – Replication
I want to replicate HQ backups to a cloud service. I would like to run a new full backup once per month, then daily incrementals the rest of the month. I am concerned the monthly's may be too large to upload to the cloud. Should I be doing this another way? I am curious what others who have larger backups do.

[Vitaliy S.]

1. Yes, that's true that for backup jobs and slow connection link between proxy and repository it is preferred to mount your NAS box to a Windows server and then use it as a repository. Given that you have a dual gigabit LAN connection, I don't think that would make any difference.

Can you please clarify what proxy server is being used during the restore process? Have you tried installing virtual proxy server for hot add restores? Also Instant VM Recovery will boost the restore process significantly too.

2. What kind of cloud service would you like to upload your backups to? Do you want to do something similar to Cloud Connect or you have already decided on the cloud storage provider?

[guitarfish]

I am using a Windows 7 Pro x64 system as the proxy when doing restores. I haven't tried the virtual proxy.

I haven't decided on a cloud storage provider yet. I know there are a lot of options, and I need to sort through all those.

[Vitaliy S.]

Got it, then try virtual proxy server for restores, as currently seems like you're uploading data over network to ESXi, which can be slow sometimes. If you haven't decided, then I would recommend taking a look at the Cloud Connect offering which will be available in v8, which is coming out this fall.

[guitarfish]

I am curious, does 10 GbE improve the performance substantially, assuming it's supported by server, switch, and NAS?

[Vitaliy S.]

The restore performance mainly depends on the management interface of the ESXi host which is throttled. You can check the max upload/restore speed over the network by uploading any big file using vSphere Client -> Datastore Browser. That said, if you want to have better restore rates, you should use virtual proxy or Instant VM recovery feature. Hope this helps!