Retiring tape backup solution for Veeam B&R

[statarka1]

Hello,
I currently have 5 ESX 4.1 hosts (3 local hosts and 2 hosts remote – DR site). I'm daily backing up VMs locally with B&R V6 and replicating 12 critical VMs to my DR site in a 16 to 22 hour constant loop. I am attempting to completely transition from a 6 weeks of daily, and (12) month-end tape rotation. My DR plan is / was centered on one year’s worth of backup data with file / database / system-state recoverability for 6 full weeks and then monthly for the remainder of a year. Tapes are currently couriered off site. I've noticed that V6 replication limits restore points to 28. My wish to eliminate backup tape was planned on replicating up to 42 (six weeks) restore points or to the limit of my remote SAN.
Could I create secondary replication jobs of the same VMs and alternate daily replications to achieve the six week store of replications? If so what files would I need to copy (seed) from the existing replication folders to setup the second replication jobs? If I setup month end replication jobs I fear the 30 days of data change would require the replication jobs to run for many hours or days. Any suggestions on how I can retain month end replication / backups? Maybe I’m using Veeam B&R incorrectly and need to look at another solution for longer data / VM recovery. Any help / solutions or ideas would be much appreciated. I’m sure there are many who are planning to or have already replaced tape backup with Veeam B&R. Thanks, Steve

[foggy]

Steven, why do you need to store such a long bunch of replicas? Do you often need to failover this far back in time? It is more common and space-friendly to reduce the number of replica restore points and store backups instead. Thanks.

[Gostev]

Agree, this approach is not good. Replicas are not something you should be using for long term retention - they are not fit for the purpose. Storage requirements alone will be quite immense to store 42 restore points in the uncompressed format. Why not just do backups to your remote SAN instead? We are doing this internally at Veeam.

In fact, most replication vendors do not even provide more than 1, latest restore points for replica (Veeam has always been quite exclusive at that). Replicas are all about quick restore to the latest state (which is what you need most of the times). For archival purposes, you really need to be using backups - which is much more disk space efficient.

[statarka1]

Thanks Gostev,
If I wish to backup to my remote SAN can I seed the backups to speed the first run as I have a slow WAN connection? Can I use my current replications as a backup seed? Thanks, Steve

[Gostev]

No - you cannot use replicas to seed the backup jobs.

[statarka1]

Thank you. I found your reply from Wed Nov 30, 2011 4:47 pm that answers my "seeding backups" question.

Steve

"Hi, there is no explicitly labeled option in UI for backup "seeding", but this is very easy to do indeed. Perform full backup to the local backup repository, then move the produced backup files to the backup repository in the remote site, perform Rescan on repository so that it registers the backup. Then, just update your existing job settings by choosing remote repository, and selecting the moved backup file via Map backup funtion on the same step of the wizard. Thanks!"