Re-structuring veeam environment - opinions please

[SaV]

Namasté!

I have to re-structure our backup environment and I need other opinions before I roll out.

• iSCSI network should be used for all data traffic (transport mode Direct Storage Access)
• Management network should be used for control traffic
• Primary Backup Storage
  • Deduplication processed by VEEAM B&R
  • short retention policies (14 days)
• Secondary Backup Storage
  • Backup Copy Jobs with long term retention policies

Questions

1. Does this make sense? Any comments or improvement suggestions?
2. Primary Backup Storage: Format RAID10 with ReFS or NTFS? Which block sizes?
3. Primary Backup Storage: If formated with ReFS - which backup mode would be best (synthetic full, forever inc, reverse inc)?
4. Secondary Backup Storage: Format RAID10 with ReFS or NTFS? Which block sizes?
5. Is it possible to deploy a second VEEAM backup server as VM, which can be used to recover from the Secondary Backup Storage in case of the Primary Backup Storage is down?

I appreciate your help and time - thank you!

[Egor Yakovlev]

Hi SaV!

Diagram looks good and your scenario is valid.
Few things to note:
- We usually go with RAID6 recommendation
- NTFS or ReFS is a big question and depends on many factors, like Windows Server edition(2012R2 vs 2016 vs 2019), amount of data you are going to backup(~ resultant backup file size), RPO and retention requirements(someone will have 14 full backups each week, someone will need 1 full per month...)
- Please check Best Practices for Backup Repository Types(here you will find NTFS vs ReFS choices) and Backup Repository Planning(here you will find block size \ stripe size practices)
- And yes, you can have 2nd VBR server on a VM, in a fresh vanilla configuration, waiting for disaster with original one to happen. Use VBR's Configuration Backup to restore all jobs and settings on stand-by VBR server in case of need.

Hope that helps!

[SaV]

Thx Egor. It helps for sure! I will look into the mentioned documents...