Question about Multitenanted Backup Architecture

[ggiesen]

I've been pouring over the documentation, and I'm trying to understand what the correct architecture is here.

We're an MSP/NSP, and we'd like to be able to backup remote infrastructure (vSphere, Hyper-V, Servers, etc) that belong to and are managed by our customers. Based on my initial understanding of how proxies worked, we hoped to accomplish this by putting a proxy in between the Veeam BR Server and the customer's network. In essence, the proxy would bridge between the customer's network and the Veeam BR network, while protecting our VBR server and associated data stores.

I've tried implementing this, but Veeam seems unable to reach the customer's vSphere VCSA through the proxy. In fact, there doesn't appear to be any way to specify to use the proxy for connectivity.

Is the only way to connect customer infrastructure by basically plugging their network into our VBR server? How does Veeam handle overlapping address space? ie. if I have two customers with vCenter servers on 192.168.1.100.

I apologize if this seems elementary, but I've previously worked with Commvault where all communication is done via the proxies, and there's no need for the main Commvault instances to talk to the customer infrastructure.

[Andreas Neufert]

Yes, the backup server itself needs to talk to the customer environments. Central Management for customers themself is provided through Enterprise Manager. For you as MSP, there is a free product called Managed Service Provider Console that addresses exactly your need.

There are as well some licensing questions and I highly recommend for the setup and architecture to contact one of our Veeam Cloud Service Provider System Engineers. You can join this program as MSP as well to get access to the specific best practices, forum area and configuration sample documentation.

[MarkBoothmaa]

Are you doing this via native VBR or are you deploying cloud connect as that is much better suited to an MSP.

This allows for individual tenant creation and allocation of resources such as backup quota and hardware plans for replicas.

[Andreas Neufert]

To add... Cloud Connect is a Backup Target as a Service offering that you can build. It comes with separate licensing.
Basically each customer has an own environment and sends copies of backup to this Cloud Connect target. Or you can offer Disaster Recovery as a Service with it and customers can replicate VMs to your datacenter then. All is multi tenant enabled.

Enterprise Manager (included in B&R ISO) can be used to centrally manage multiple Veeam Backup & Replication environments within a customer. Veeam ONE Monitor/Reporter can help here as well.

Veeam Service Provider console is for MSPs that want to manage multiple Veeam environments from multiple customers as a service.
The background stack is Cloud Connect but you do not have to use it if you do not want to offer BaaS or DRaaS offerings.