Veeam B&R 6.5 Design Advice in a Server Consolidation projec

[massimiliano.rizzi]

Hello experts,

as part of a Server Consolidation project for a small customer, we are also switching to Veeam B&R 6.5 and finally stop the nightmare of backing up multiple physical servers from a single pass using Symantec Backup Exec 2012.

We will shut down some old single-socket entry-level tower servers using relatively old Dual-Core Intel Xeon 3040/Intel Xeon E3110 Processors and running the OEM version of Microsoft Windows Server 2003 R2 Standard Edition.

All resulting virtual machines (a VM running SBS 2011 Standard, a couple of Windows Server 2003 R2 Standard Edition VMs running terminal services and a LOB application, a Windows 2000 VM running a LOB application and a couple of virtual desktops running Windows 7 Professional) will be consolidates onto a single dual-socket ESXi host using modern Intel Xeon Quad-Core CPUs.

The estimated total size of the above mentioned virtual machines will be less than 500 GB.

With regard to the Veeam B&R 6.5 Design plan, since we currently have a spare Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard Edition license it would be possible for us to:

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1) Repurpose one of the above mentioned entry-level tower servers, install onto it a couple of additional 3 TB SATA II Hard Drives, the spare Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard Edition license and Veeam B&R 6.5. Veeam B&R 6.5 jobs will be performed with network mode against the local backup repository, and then the resulting Veeam backup files on the local backup repository will be duplicated for off-site archive to a local USB RDX drive and to a NAS device installed on a different building that will be connected via fiber optic.
2) Create a dedicated virtual proxy running on the ESXi host (that will have plenty of CPU cycles we can re-use during off-work hours), install onto it the spare Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard Edition license and perform Veeam B&R 6.5 jobs with hotadd mode. One of the above mentioned entry-level tower servers will be repurposed without changing the operating system (fresh installation only). We will install onto it a couple of additional 3 TB SATA II and use it as a backup repository to store the resulting Veeam backup files. During a second stage Veeam backup files will be duplicated for off-site archive to the local USB RDX drive and to the NAS device installed on a different building that will be connected via fiber optic already mentioned.
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It would be great if someone could kindly advice me and validate a Veeam B&R 6.5 Design plan based on real world experiences.

Thanks and Regards,

Massimiliano

[foggy]

Massimiliano, both variants seem good to me, very close to the best practices. Generally, the second way is more preferred one (keeping in mind possible backup performance and ability to perform fast restores using hotadd mode).

[massimiliano.rizzi]

Hi Foggy,

thank you very much for sharing your thoughts about our design.

I understand that the second variant is preferable over the first way because of the overall better performance and the ability to perform fast restores using hotadd mode.

I also think that should we ever need to use the spare Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard Edition license for something else, the first variant using relatively old Dual-Core Intel Xeon 3040/Intel Xeon E3110 Processors along with network transport mode should also be pretty good considering the very small number of virtual machines being backed up and the small amount of data. Obviously it will take longer when Veeam B&R will be performing both the initial active full backup and the subsequent Reversed Incrementals, but imho the “overall results” should be more than acceptable (keeping in mind the specific scenario).

Do you agree ?

[Vitaliy S.]

Yes, both deployments have their own pros and cons, in some cases network mode might be even faster. Anyway, as you've correctly stated during incremental runs the difference shouldn't be very noticeable.

[massimiliano.rizzi]

Thanks again for sharing your thoughts !