Noob Design Advice

[t481]

Hello
I'm looking to implement a Veeam backup solution in a small office environment. The environment consists of 2 physical ESXi hosts and a dedicated physical server for backups and a Dell SAN TL2000 tape library for backup purposes. The entire set up is connected via iSCSI to the SAN. I've been watching some of your videos on YouTube and I was wondering if I could get some advice from fellow Veeam users. Is the following set up the best in terms of performance and resilience? any advice would be greatly appreciated.

* Veeam Backup Server in a Virtual Machine
* The dedicated server as a proxy to store the data and to carry out the workload required for the backup jobs
* An optional virtual machine set up as another proxy to utilise the host capabilities to aid with the backup jobs

The SAN solution is a Dell MD3260i.

I thought it would be better to have backup server as a virtual machine instead of installing it on the physical server for HA purposes since, from what I understand, it will be the proxy that will be doing most of the workload.

Many thanks in advance

[veremin]

As to me, your plan sounds good.

Direct SAN for fast backups, and virtual proxy for Hot-Add restores and additional backup tasks. Though, I doubt it's really necessary to have additional virtual machine for that, as that task can be done by virtual backup server.

If I were you, I would also attach the tape device to physical proxy/repository, assign tape server role on that server, and archive backups to tapes to guarantee long term retention.

Thanks.

[t481]

Thanks @v.Eremin

Thanks for your quick response, with regards to the physical tape drive, that was exactly my intention so that the physical box would function as a proxy and a repository. I'm glad i'm on the right track

In terms of the connectivity, how would Direct SAN work with the MD3260i? Would it automatically recognise it and utilise D-SAN or would I have to install some sort of plugin to allow that? I take it the Veeam backup server will interface with the ESXi hosts to identify the VMs and then carry out the snapshots on the MD3260i so that the hosts are not doing the snapshot-ing right?

[veremin]

Check corresponding section of our sticky FAQ in regards to how Direct SAN mode should be configured. Thanks.

[foggy]

I take it the Veeam backup server will interface with the ESXi hosts to identify the VMs and then carry out the snapshots on the MD3260i so that the hosts are not doing the snapshot-ing right?

Not exactly, VM VMware snapshots are required for backup.