Two Veeam B&R servers, one source VM, and CBT

[foggy]

Paul, in terms of CBT, there are no issues in backing up/replicating the same VM using different backup servers. Please review the thread above.

[pverburg]

OK,
so CBT is not a problem now I can concentrate on the slow link and what the "best" solution is to make this work.

Thanks,
Paul V.

[foggy]

Yes, seems you have everything that is required in-place, however, feel free to open a dedicated thread if you need any help/clarification with this. Thanks.

[ingvargo]

Hi

if i have VM in one backup job and in one replication job, does that not mess up the CBT information for that VM?
i was afraid that it could be a problem for the integrity of the backup and/or the replica.

also i see that some people recommend to have seperate Veeam server in the destination site that only will be responsible for the replication, could that introduce problem when the replication job is working in the same time as the backup job ( regarding to snapshots )

BR
Ingvar

[foggy]

Ingvar, please review this thread for answers. Basically, there're no issues in terms of CBT, however you'd better make sure the jobs from different backup servers targeting the same VM don't overlap in time, as this can cause conflicts.

[ingvargo]

Thanks Foggy, do i also have to make sure there is no overlapping if the remote server is doing replication and not doing backup job?

BR
Ingvar

[ingvargo]

Hi

also in case of replication, if i do a hourly replication of my production enviroment on business hours and would use the VSS application aware processing, would that interfere with SQL logging backup jobs ( truncate logs ) that i have running every 15 minutes?

BR
Ingvar

[foggy]

Type of the job doesn't matter, you'd better not touch the same VM twice simultaneously. This is handled within a single backup server automatically, but you need to keep that in mind if you're using different Veeam B&R instances.

By default, replication jobs use 'copy only' setting, so there should not be any issues with transaction logs handling.

[hasayeret]

Hi guys,

We are running Veeam B&R 9u1 in 2 different location and we're experiencing an interesting behavior.
For some reason, Veeam lets us run a replication from location A and backup from location B on the same VM at the same time.
However, the next time i'll run a job on that VM, no matter from what location, the VM will have to be re-read from the beginning like it was the first time it has ever been processed.
I do not see any errors or "wrong CBT" in the log. Everything is green and nice.
Is this a normal behavior???

[foggy]

Hi Rotem, basically it is not recommended to run the jobs in this case at the same time, you should ensure they are not overlapping. You can find more in the thread above and in this other thread as well. Thanks.

[dtnsup]

Hello,

I do have a question regarding the functionality of CBT on VMware VMs:
Can a certain VM running on ESXi be backed up by multiple different backup servers or even multiple backup software products? Are CTK-files able to track multiple lists of changed blocks?

The simplest case:
Run independent backups of a VM from 2 different Veeam backup servers (sequentially, not overlapping). Is this possible or do they interfere with one another by messing up or resetting the CTK-file from the previous backup by the other server?

I did a bit of reading on the topic but I did not come to a final conclusion. The VDDK programming guide mentions the use of change IDs which suggests that multiple lists of changed blocks can be tracked. If so, is there any kind of limitation?

Thanks,
Jan

[DGrinev]

Hi Jan and welcome to the community!

Please review this existing thread for the answers you are looking for.

Thanks!

[dtnsup]

Hello Dmitry,

thanks for pointing me in the right direction! Now I found all the information I was looking for.

Jan