Ideas for backup architecture

[claudiofolu]

This is my environment

Primary site
4 Servers with esxi 5.1
EMC VNX 10TB (MirroView)
30 VMs

Secondary site, (same broadcast of LAN)
2 Rack servers
EMC VNX (MirrorView Syncronous setup)
10VMs

Is an active-active configuration

What configuration of Veeam do you recommend to take backups only, not replication, since that is covered by the MirrorView

I was thinking in a physical VBR server to do some Direct SAN, an aditional storage to use as repositoy, and a tape library attached to the SAN (thinking in the new features of the v7).
Should I be using proxys?

[foggy]

Claudio, if I'm getting your environment right, you could set up an additional storage in each location and configure local backups as well as cross-site backup copy jobs (to store each site's backups offsite). As for the Veeam B&R installation, you can set it up as physical server (to be able to use tape integration coming in v7) and also have either physical or virtual proxy at another location to be able to perform fast backups there.

Also, I would like to mention that due to several reasons SAN replication cannot be considered as a full replacement for true replication performed by Veeam B&R. For example, with Veeam B&R replication you can quickly fail over to the ready-to-start replica VM in case of disaster and easily fail back if required. Some other reasons are described in this blog post.

[claudiofolu]

Thank you foggy,
The cross-site backup copy job, will it be available in v7 or is already there? You must create a second job using the second site storage?
Last question, there are some kind of integration in v7 to perform backups usgin storage snapshots with EMC?

[foggy]

The cross-site backup copy job, will it be available in v7 or is already there? You must create a second job using the second site storage?

The new Backup Copy job type will be available in v7 and will allow to offload VM restore points to the secondary site storage without affecting production VMs.

Last question, there are some kind of integration in v7 to perform backups usgin storage snapshots with EMC?

Integration with EMC storage snapshots will not be provided in the upcoming release.

[claudiofolu]

foggy, in this scenario, how do you recommend to configure the respositories? We are about to buy a second storage like I said, but how do we use that storage with Veeam as a repository? Do I need to attach another physical server to it? create a VM and assign virtual disks from there? not a good idea since the 2TB limitation per vdisk.
Any suggestions appreciated.

[veremin]

Can you clarify what kind of a storage you’re talking about?

From my perspective, this appliance can be easily attached to the existing physical instance of VB&R and added then to a backup console as a backup repository. Please be also aware that for now the tape library should be attached directly to VB&R management server, not the proxy or repository server.

Thanks.

[foggy]

Actually depends on the storage, however the most recommended way is using in-guest iSCSI initiator from the backup repository to the storage device. Not really recommend to store backups on VMFS. Here are some good topics for review: Backup **to** SAN and VM larger than 2TB in size: How to backup it to a Qnap NAS?

[claudiofolu]

What if I lost the physical server who is running the veeam management server ? Which is the best way to protect it or be ready to restore a backup? Is it posssible to restore a backup in a new instance of veeam running as a VM?

[veremin]

Yep, in order to do it you should utilize configuration backup that retrieves regularly configuration data directly from VB&R database.

Regarding recommendations, you can create a share disk, map it to your physical instance of VB&R and use as a target repository for configuration backup. Should any disaster situation happen (physical server goes down, for instance), all you would need to do is to install Veeam on any other virtual machine you have and import previously backed up configuration.

More information about protecting VB&R server can be found here.

Thanks.