How do you protect a dev/sandbox?

[pkelly_sts]

We're looking to revamp how we manage our dev environments (currently a clone of production VMs that gets refreshed/replaced once in a blue moon, i.e. rarely) so I'm looking into options revolving around Veeam & replicas.

Creating the replicas is easy, spinning them up is easy, making them available to end users is slightly more complicated (DNS aliases etc.) but very doable. What I'm not sure of is the options to protect those DEV VMs against, say, a storage failure halfway through a development cycle. Let's assume for now that a dev cycle is 2 months, after which we'd refresh/replace the replicas from live ready to start the next cycle with latest state.

So, can you do actually Veeam backups of replica VMs?

In our case they'd be a separate job with a different SLA, probably not copied off-site/to tape etc. but I'm sure I remember reading something a long while ago about backing up replicas having issues?

So, how do you manage/protect/refresh your dev environment?

[foggy]

Hi Paul, when backing up replica VMs, CBT is not available. No limitations other than that.

[pkelly_sts]

Ah excellent, I can live without CBT for such an environment!

I shall have a play next week, thanks!