Backup AND Disaster Recovery with branches

[mdaldegan]

Hi, I'm in the process of evaluating Veeam as a Backup and Disaster Recovery solution. We have several remote branches (ROBO) around Europe, and we're brainstorming an architecture based on the many possible scenarios that Veaam provides. So far, we've come up with this:

1. Provide DR to HeadQuarters VMs (HQ) with a replica job to a larger ROBO
2. Provide DR to ROBOs with a replica job to HQ
3. Provide Backup to HQ with backup jobs to a cheap storage in HQ
4. Provide Backup to ROBO with a backup job ON VMs REPLICAS FROM POINT 2 ABOVE

Has somebody experienced a similar architecture, and what do you think of it? Is it feasible to make backups of replicas as in point 4, and does this make any sense?
Furthermore, we'd like to sophisticate our retention policy a littel further the "X restore points", something more in the flavour of "7 days, 4 weeks, 6 month, 5 years". Which are best options here?

Thanks in advance

[foggy]

Marco, your scenario looks good. To answer your questions, please address to these existing threads: Backup a VM_replica, Offsite Backup and Replication, and son-father-grandfather rotation suggestion. Thanks.

[mdaldegan]

Thanks Alexander. Due to the mentioned limitation of VMWare that doesn't allow CBT to be effective on powered off VMs, does it still make sense to have a replica job at all? Wouldn't it be better to just have one backup job from the remote branch to the HQ, use reverse incremental and leverage on vPower feature in case of disaster?
Thanks

[Vitaliy S.]

Hi Marco, actually there are lots of benefits of using replicas instead of "Instant Recovery" VMs, please see this topic for more info:
VMware : [FAQ] FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

[dellock6]

Marco,
you can also simplify your jobs by using a single backup job from Veeam, and than replicate the files created by Veeam using other external options (hardware replica of the storage for example). Using replicas on the other side has an advantage of placing VM replicas directly on a vmfs file system and registering retention points as snapshots, so in case of DR you can simply power on VM from and ESXi server without needing a Veeam Backup server.
You need first to evaluate the target hardware and bandwidth you have, to further narrow the possibilites.

Luca.