Veeam Backup Essentials Standard disaster recovery strategy

[sfabs]

Hi

I hope this isn't a silly question. I would like to know how other users are configuring their environments for disaster recovery...

The reason I ask is as follows.

I have Veeam backup Essentials Standard, which only allows 1 install.

I currently have 1 ESXi host with all my VM's including my backup VM running Veeam. This works well as backups are very fast (backups are sent to a NAS).

I want to install a new ESXi host to host a critical application VM. The ESXi2 will have enough resources to host additional VM's if necessary.

My question is this, I want to use ESXi2 for redundancy, should ESXi1 fail, I want to bring up VM's on ESXi2. The problem is, that if ESXi1 fails, I lose my Veeam server so I have no way of restoring VM's from my NAS to the ESXi2. I only have 1 license so I cannot house a copy of Veeam on ESXi2 ready to function in the event ESXi1 fails. Yes I could probably install Veeam and use the license (as ESXi1 is down), configure and then begin restoring VM's, but I wouldnt call this a quick solution.

Am I missing something? can anyone give me advice or tips? I don't want to have to buy another Veeam license "just encase" something happens to ESXi1... there must be a better way?

[DGrinev]

Hi Fab and welcome to the community!

You can install as many instances of Veeam B&R as you need with the Essentials Standard, but it's better to manage the backup infrastructure from a single pane of glass.
I'd recommend you to deploy Veeam B&R on the ESXi2, using configuration backup migrate to the new instance, set up replication job for those critical VMs additionally to the existing backup jobs. In case of outage on ESXi1 you will be able to fire up these VMs. Thanks!

[sfabs]

Hi DGrinev
Thanks so much for getting back to me. "You can install as many instances of Veeam B&R as you need with the Essentials Standard" that is great to hear, I was told on the Veeam customer service chat that I could only have 1 install.
Thank you for your idea, I did wonder about moving the backup to ESXi2. I think that is a good idea. The only thing is ESXi2 will host a critical application VM and I have enough redundancy on ESXi1 to recover the application server to ESXi1 in the event that ESXi2 fails. Then I am in the same boat as before...
I did consider having a 3rd piece hardware running just the Veeam server but I dont want to add lots more machines, defeats the object of virtualizing. The only idea I came up with was having veeam installed on each ESXi with the configuration applied. Only 1 of the instances would do the backups and replication BUT the other instance would have the ability to restore VM's from the NAS device. Do you think this achievable or do you strongly recommend not using 2 instances.

[DGrinev]

In case of a disaster on the ESXi2 you can fire up Veeam B&R server on ESX1, perform configuration restore and start restoring backups from NAS.
We don't recommend to use 2 instances simultaneously in the same infrastructure to avoid job overlapping which may cause jobs to fail. Thanks!