Best Backup-Practice with USB 3.0 Disks

[mabordo]

Hi at all,
i want to get out the best Backup-Practice with the following VMware-ESXi-Enviroment and USB 3.0 Disks:
- One ESXi-Host with 2 VMs
- 10 USB 3.0 Disks

The only precondition is that are the USB 3.0 Disks depend on the ESXi-Host-Server and put into a Safe after Backup.
Veeam Backup and Replication are running as a third VM at the ESXi-Host with Windows Server 2012R2. The VM identify the USB 3.0 Disks by adding a USB 3.0 xHCI-Controller.

What do you think are the Best Backup-Practise in this case? Are there any experience with These conditions?


Thanks for help.

Greetings

[foggy]

Marcelo, do not forget to enable rotated drive option in the backup repository settings and make sure all the drives keep the same drive letter during the first backup to them.

[mabordo]

Thanks foggy for replay.
I am familar with the Option rotated drive Option. The drives are also keeping the same letter when the disks are chaning.

But my Question are what are the Best Strategy to Backup the two VMs on the USB 3.0 Disks with veeam. In Example full-backup, inkremental... and in which interval.

Are there anyone here that have the same backup-infrastructure?

[foggy]

But my Question are what are the Best Strategy to Backup the two VMs on the USB 3.0 Disks with veeam. In Example full-backup, inkremental... and in which interval.

I think nobody can answer these questions better then you as answers depend solely on your RTO/RPO requirements. I.e. what is the acceptable period of data loss and how far in the past you need to be able to restore to.

[mabordo]

Actually (the enviroment is physical) we backup with following principle:
- full-backup daily at Monday to Thursday with Disk 1 to Disk 4
- full-backup weekly at Friday with Disk 5 to Disk 7
- full-backup monthly at fourth Friday at the end of the month with Disk 8 to Disk 10

Is this Strategy also convertible to VMware and veeam? And my finally question: is this Strategy efficient in veeam or there are another solution with veeam?

[foggy]

So basically currently you perform fulls daily to different disks with longer retention of weekly and monthly ones. So your requirement is daily rotation and full backup on each disk. You can do this with Veeam B&R with just a single backup job, just make sure you're inserting the correct drive each day.

[mabordo]

Ok foggy thanks für your replay.

Could you tell me how to define this backupjob?

[foggy]

Configure it to run daily Mon-Fri, the backup method and number of restore points to keep do not really matter since it will make a full each time, on each newly inserted disk.

[mabordo]

Thanks for the Information foggy.
I had tested the properties last Night. I was frightened how low the Data processing rate to the USB 3.0 Disk.
The processing rate are 40 MB/s and this is very slow i think.

How can increase processing rate to USB 3.0? I had tested with following properties in veeam:
Compression Level = optimal
Change Block tracking = enabled
Bottleneck = Proxy

Are there any other adjustments to optimize the processing rate to the USB 3.0 Disks?

thanks

[veremin]

Bottleneck statistics suggest that the weakest point in chain is proxy server, rather than a target repository. What proxy mode are you using?

[mabordo]

The Transport mode in the VMware Proxy is at Automatic selection.
Other properties in this case is:
- Connected Datastores: Automatic detection
- Max concurrent tasks: 2
- no taffic rules

Is it possible to Change the Parameters to optimize the processing rate?

[veremin]

information about used proxy mode can be found in the corresponding job session statistics (look for special [san], [hot-add], [nbd] metrics). So, can you provide that?

[mabordo]

There are no special entries like san, hot-add or nbd.
The only entry in the statistic there are significant is:

Load: Source 17 % > Proxy 94 % > Network 54 % > Target 41 %

[foggy]

Your proxy CPU seems to be overloaded, try to add more vCPU to this VM.

[veremin]

There are no special entries like san, hot-add or nbd.

Double click a given job, select a corresponding VM on the left, find "using backup proxy PROXY NAME for disk DISK name [x]" line. The mode should be shown in the square brackets.

[mabordo]

The entry reads as follows:
"Using backup proxy VMware Backup Proxy for disk Hard disk 1 [hotadd]"

[foggy]

Check proxy VM resources, it looks like it is not capable of processing the retrieved data faster.

[mabordo]

Were do i check the Proxy VM resources? When i copy Data from the Basic System (Win 2012 R2) to the USB 3.0 Disk, the proecessing Data is 90 MB/s

[foggy]

Remember, proxy also does compression/deduplication of the VM data.

[mabordo]

In summary a short Report over the last awareness:

During the following Setting possibilities in Veeam the processing rate increase to 84 MB/s.
- Compression level: dedupe-friendly
- Proxy transport mode: Virtual Appliance

With these settings the processing rate are increasing but the reserved disc-space increase also.
But it is ok there are approx. 5 % disc-space more reserved as the Compression Level normal.


Thank you all for your posts

[veremin]

So, switching compression level from optimal to dedupe-friendly resulted in doubled performance (84 vs 40)? Was it the only change introduced by you?