Tapeless backup strategy with v6

[mjwilde]

I have just installed v6 and am trying to find the best backup strategy for my company.

I have 1 ESXi 5 server at the main site. I have a separate physical server for backups and I run a reverse incremental job each night. I recently set up replication to a remote site and this seems have worked OK.

So thats me hopefully sorted as far as DR is concerned.

My next issue is retention. I was thinking I would have a large capacity NAS box stored locally to the ESXi server. I could then dump a weekly/monthly full backup to this device. In theory this will allow me to get away from tape / portable disk backups.

However, my problem is knowing what happens in v6 if a replication job fails? Does it render everything at the second site unusable? My fear is something like a fire at the main site, taking out the ESXi server, the backup server and the NAS storage, and for this to happen in the middle of a replication job. In this scenario, would I be without a good restorable backup?

My other thought was to have some NAS storage at the second site so I am holding more than just the replica VM. However, my understanding of the licensing is that I would need an extra Veeam B&R licence at the second site as I would actually be doing a backup of the replica (is this possible?), located on the second ESXi (backup) server.

Please can someone advise?

Thanks

[Gostev]

Hi, many - if not all - questions you are asking are covered in the sticky FAQ topic, kindly please read review it. Thanks.