proxy server vCPU requirements.

[quint4321]

Hi,

We have an environment with one proxy server per site, with each site having only between 1 and 5 VMs being backed up and replicated.
This is set up so that only one job is ever using the proxy, switching between backup and replication.
an average site has about 2TB of total data to process each job run.

On several sources it lists the minimum requirement as 1 vCPU per concurrent task, so in this case 1 vCPU per proxy should be sufficient for my setup.
Yet the user guide states:

CPU: modern x86 processor (minimum 2 cores or vCPUs). Using multi-core
processors improves data processing performance, and allows for more tasks to
be processed concurrently by proxy.
Memory: 2 GB RAM plus 200MB for each concurrent task. Using faster memory
(DDR3) improves data processing performance.

Hence the question: will 1vCPU per proxy be OK for me or should I keep the minimum to 2?

[PTide]

Hi,

1 core per task means 1 core per 1 virtual disk so if you want to proccess 5 VMs concurrently it will be better to have at least 5 cores (assuming that each VM has only one disk). Don't forget to raise the number of concurrent tasks on your proxy ans repository. You can set a number of concurrent tasks to whatever number you want, however it's recommended not to set the it larger than amount of cores.

Thank you.

[quint4321]

Hi, I am not using parallel processing so all disks and VMs are being processes sequentially.

[PTide]

Then you can set the number of tasks to 1 and set the number of vCPU to 1. You can increase the number of cores in case bottleneck statistics reports proxy being the bottleneck. May I ask you about the reason why not to use parallel processing?

Thanks

[quint4321]

not using parallel processing is being changed specifically for this 1 vCPU request, we are simply managing the Veeam backups for a third party corporation who asked us if we could get by with just one vCPU and 8 GB ram per proxy.
so disabling this was my first step, tested and still able to complete backups within the allowed window but I was simply worried about the stated "minimum 2 cores or vCPUs" in the documentation.

[PTide]

Since you're not going to process disks concurrently ~2,5 Gb of RAM should be enough (that figure does not include OS requirements)

[quint4321]

Thank you for the clarifications so far,
would it be possible to just get a final confirmation that the 1 vCPU per proxy should not be a problem if we are not processing disks concurrently so I can confirm this to our customer?

[PTide]

would it be possible to just get a final confirmation that the 1 vCPU per proxy should not be a problem if we are not processing disks concurrently so I can confirm this to our customer?

Yes, you can use a single CPU proxy to process multiple VMs with multiple disks sequentially.

[Gostev]

Note that you can use a single CPU proxy to process multiple VMs with multiple disks concurrently too, it is just that proxy CPU resources will likely become the main bottleneck and will start affecting processing speed. If you don't worry about the latter, then feel free to use proxies with single vCPU even for concurrent processing. Just make sure that you explain this to the customer, so that he or she does not come to our support later complaining about slow processing speed

[albertwt]

So what's the guideline in tweaking the Veeam Backup 9.0 proxy VM specs ?

At the moment I have 3x VMs running Windows Server 2008 R2: 4x vCPu and 4 GB vRAM.

[PTide]

So what's the guideline in tweaking the Veeam Backup 9.0 proxy VM specs ?

That depends on how many virtual disk you would like to process concurrently. A recommended minimum is one core per task. Also please check the system requirements page.

Thanks