New to Veeam, just a couple of questions

[mrmicp]

Hi Folks,

Well I stumbled across veeam while looking for the best way to setup DR on VM's at our small site and from what I can see and have read I'm very impressed. At first glance it seems a lot more easier, feature rich and reliable than VMware's options.

We have two buildings on site conncted via fibre currently limited to 1gbps and three esxi hosts spilt across these buildings. My evenutal plan is to do a P2V conversion of our Exchange 2010 server and setup replication between the buildings.

So as i'm new to this and there is a lot to consider I thought maybe I could ask your advice on a couple of questions...

1) What is ideal setup is in regards to putting the proxy, repositories and Veeam B&R servers on physical or VM's
2) Is it advisable or not to share roles wherever possible and if so what roles
3) When I get Exchange running on a VM, I assume the right way will be to do a continous replication. Is this the only method to keep data upto date across the two hosts

Thanks for any help and advice it will hopefully get me going in the right direction

[veremin]

What is ideal setup is in regards to putting the proxy?

You can probably implement onsite replication scenario, using one proxy model, when both of the agents are being run on one proxy server.

However, since all of features like throttling rules, compression, etc, are implemented between two agents, two-proxy replication scheme can also be your choice. For instance, if want for your data to cross the network in compressed state, or you’re willing to prevent jobs from utilizing the entire bandwidth available in your environment, and so on.

Veeam B&R servers on physical or VM's

Veeam Backup and Replication can be installed on any Windows-based machine, regardless it’s physical or virtual one. Furthermore, the role of backup proxy server can be assigned to any Windows-based machine.

I assume the right way will be to do a continous replication

Yep, continuous replication should guarantee minimal RPO/RTO for you.

For setting continuous replication: Go to the replication job settings -> Schedule -> Run the job automatically -> Periodically every -> Hours -> Continuously.

Hope this helps.
Thanks.

[foggy]

1) What is ideal setup is in regards to putting the proxy, repositories and Veeam B&R servers on physical or VM's

There is no ideal setup, actually. What is best for your case depends on the backup strategy you are going to implement, required RTO and RPO, backup load and amount of changes on the backed up VMs, available resources, hardware, etc. You can search this forum for multiple existing discussions on what our customers do. Btw, here is the most recent one regarding physical vs. virtual proxies.

2) Is it advisable or not to share roles wherever possible and if so what roles

By default, Veeam B&R installation combines all the roles (management server, backup proxy, backup repository), however you can easily tweak your setup according to your requirements. Basic scenarios architecture are described in the corresponding sections of the product user guide (p.15, 24).

3) When I get Exchange running on a VM, I assume the right way will be to do a continous replication. Is this the only method to keep data upto date across the two hosts

Be careful with continuous replication of such a highly-transactional application as Exchange. Each replication cycle puts a considerable impact on such VMs that's why it is often recommended to perform near-continuous replication without using aplication-aware image processing (i.e. to perform crash consistent backups). You could read a bit more on this here.

[mrmicp]

Hi,

Thanks all for your input its really appreciated and has given me a few thinsg to think about. I have also just come off a call with a veeam support engineer that was see up by out IT suppliers and he seems to indicate that because we only have approx 150 mailboxes on our exchange server with about 250 gig of data in our mail and public stores that we shouldn't really see much of a performance issue with continuous backups, but advised to start with an hour in between and work our way upto continuous.

I'm planning on setting up our HP storageworks servers as the backup repo and installling the proxy and veeam B&R on one VM, would this seem a sensible setup or would it be a better idea to install the proxy and repo on the HP Storageworks?

Thanks Again

[foggy]

For replication, you need a backup repository to store replica metadata only, so you do not need a separate repository for that (unless you are going to do backups also). You can use the default backup repository created as a part of Veeam B&R installation. Further, I suspect that you cannot install a proxy on this device as the proxy should run on a Windows-based machine.

[mrmicp]

I would like to do backups in the future of other VM's that may come online and don't necessarily need replication. Sorry I should have mentioned before that the HP Storage works runs windows storage server, with that being the case would it be advisable to install the proxy software on there too?

Thanks, I really do apprecaite all the help and advice given

[foggy]

Mostly depends on the source storage and transport mode you are going to use. The easiest way is to use the default virtual proxy installed as a part of Veeam B&R residing on the same host as your Exchange server (so be able to use hotadd). You can then add proxies as needed.