Offsite Storage

[BobNewOrleans]

We use Veeam 9.5 for automated daily backups of two VMs to a local repository along with weekly synthetic full backups. This has been working well without intervention but now my boss wants the latest full backup copied offsite once a month. After the copy completes successfully, the old version is to be deleted to save storage. In other words, he always want one complete recent full backup to be stored offsite and he want the whole process automated. Can Veeam do this?
Bob

[DGrinev]

Hi Bob and welcome to the community!

You cannot set it up in the way you described. You can copy the latest full once a month, but that's not secure and consistent approach.
Imagine you sent corrupted backup offsite and a disaster happened at the local site.

The backup copy job was specifically designed for the secondary target backups and has numerous advantages against the simple file copy.
I'd suggest to set it up with the following settings: 7 days interval, 2 RPs retention and checked "Read the entire restore point from source backup...". The interval should start on the weekly full backup creation day.
This way you will have a full backup file offsite on a weekly basis, also it will remove every third backup with the retention value 2 (always 2 full backups offsite). Thanks!

[BobNewOrleans]

Dmitri,
Thanks for the advice.

The full backups are fairly large. One is 341GB and the other is 112GB. If I can achieve 10 Mbps throughput for 9 hours between 7pm and 6am, I calculate
that it'll take 113 hours or 13 days to copy both files. Since they can run all day on Sat and Sunday, the job should complete more quickly than that
but for starters, I'll set it to run every 28 days. After the first time, I'll have some real data to see what kind of throughput I'm actually getting.

Do you expect that completion time would be affected by whether I include both VMs in the same backup copy job or create two backup copy jobs, one for each full backup?
Bob

[DGrinev]

You can use a single backup copy job with the local repository as a source.
Also, if you have a way to deliver a seed to the offsite in order to use Backup Copy Job Mapping, that would help you to avoid full data transfer through the slow connection.

[foggy]

Do you expect that completion time would be affected by whether I include both VMs in the same backup copy job or create two backup copy jobs, one for each full backup?

Since network is the bottleneck here, I wouldn't expect any benefit from running two backup copy jobs in parallel.

[tcogghe1976]

Or you can back up to a dedup appliance like Data Domain or StoreOnce. The first full backup will still need to get to the appliance in some way. If you can do a full backup or copy to the dedup appliance on site and then move it to the off site location it's easy to do. The advantages of such an appliance with B&R Enterprise (Plus) are considerable, not only for your dedup ratio but also the way backup traffic is handled. With less than half a TB of data you can even use the free HPE StoreOnce VSA. Even the 0.5 TB DataDomain VE might be sufficient, especially for a POC.

[Andreas Neufert]

Just to summarice in Veeam language what Tom has descrived.

Add the dedup storage to your target destination. Place the Veeam Gateway Server (entry) of the dedup storage repository on the source side. This will allow DDBoost or Catalyst to optimize the traffic.

[BobNewOrleans]

Thanks to all for the useful info and advice. Yes, we could potentially run the initial backup on-net then ship the device to the remote site. And free is an attractive price for increased efficiency.

Since I’m not familiar with dedup technology, please indulge some ignorant questions. Are these physical appliances or does VSA stand for Virtual Storage Appliance? And in Tom’s reply he mentions VE and POC; what do these refer to?

Our Veeam license is for Enterprise Edition. Does deduplication support require an Enterprise Plus license?

Thanks again!
Bob

[Andreas Neufert]

Both are virtual editions.
Enterprise license included dedup integrations from Veeam side

[ejenner]

why not get your hands on a couple of portable USB hard drives and connect them to your local repository. Then put your monthlys on the removable USB hard drives and take the backups off site like that.

You can work around issues like access to server room or lack of automation or security (or whatever) by attaching the drives to a different machine if you don't want to connect them to your main repository or deal with the extra workload personally.

Not sure what your relationship is like with your boss but I remember working for people who would have liked the personal responsibility of knowing they had a backup of key data on a drive they can physically touch sitting at their own desk.

[bdufour]

whats up bob,

im from new orleans too buddy, i understand where your boss is coming from. the city is held together by imagination at this point - so offsite backups are very important in any organization, but especially here. i agree with getting a seed offsite, and/or going the usb route, you dont have that much data honestly - but if you go the usb route as ej mentioned, make sure to encrypt your backup files through veeam, if the hardware doesnt support it.

good luck!