I'm currently in the process of configuring Veeam for replication to a DR site that can be used to failover VMs in the event of a disaster at the production site. I'm still getting acclimated as to how Veeam works and I was hoping someone with a little more experienced wouldn't mind reviewing my plan and picking it apart in case I've overlooked something or made an incorrect assumption.
My environment:
3 ESXi 5.5 servers - two configured for HA at production site and one independent at DR site (all managed by a single VCenter server VM)
Veeam B&R 7.0
Prod datastore connected via iscsi subnet shared by ESXi hosts
DR datastore connected via direct iscsi to ESXi host
10mbps dedicated fiber between Prod and DR sites
My plan is the following:
Install Veeam B&R on a VM server running on the prod ESXi hosts that would: run the replication jobs; act as a backup proxy
Install Veeam B&R on a VM server running on the DR ESXi host that would: host the Veeam SQL database; host the backup repository; act as a backup proxy
In this configuration both Veeam instances would be writing to and modifying the same SQL database so there would be no need to manually backup/restore the Veeam database at the DR site in order to do a graceful failver and failback (failback assuming the production site is able to recover).
It sounds almost too simple now that I've written it out. Am I missing something?
One correction I think I already need to make based off of information in another thread....the backup repository isn't used for failover/failback and should be on my Veeam VM server at my production site (closest to source).
My plan is the following:
Install Veeam B&R on a VM server running on the prod ESXi hosts that would: run the replication jobs; act as a backup proxy
Install Veeam B&R on a VM server running on the DR ESXi host that would: host the Veeam SQL database; host the backup repository; act as a backup proxy
Let Veeam B&R server deployed on the prod hosts do all your backup jobs, and configure your "remote" Veeam B&R server with replication jobs. See this post from foggy for further clarification > Backup Remote sites with veeam
KristiEva wrote:In this configuration both Veeam instances would be writing to and modifying the same SQL database so there would be no need to manually backup/restore the Veeam database at the DR site in order to do a graceful failver and failback (failback assuming the production site is able to recover).
Multiple backup server cannot share the same SQL database, so you will still end up having two databases created on the remote SQL Server instance. If you want to protect your Veeam B&R server on the prod host, then you will need to either backup the configuration file, use remote SQL Server and back it up or replicate this server with another Veeam B&R.
