VPN needed for backup copy across WAN

[neilmurphy65]

Hi All,

One of our customers is thinking of different ways of offering backup as a service to their customers, starting by doing it for themselves as an in-house DR solution. They are trying to work out which would be a better option, either a standard deployment or a VCSP setup.

What I’m still not sure of is whether it is best practice to use a VPN for a standard install where backup copy jobs traverse a WAN connection. The customer points out that since Veeam uses dynamic port ranges (e.g. 2500-5000 for some types of communication, 49152-65535 for others) port forwarding becomes a problem and he wants to know if VPN is used as a way around this.

Does anyone know how the port forwarding issue is addressed?

Many thanks,
Neil.

[Vitaliy S.]

Hi Neil,

Generally, It is recommended to use VCSP setup and do not spend time configuring and maintaining VPN connection. In this case you don't need to open multiple ports in your firewall and all the traffic will still be secured via Cloud Connect components.

Thanks!

[neilmurphy65]

Thanks Vitaly.

So this leads to two more questions:

1. VCSP would require a per-VM licensing scheme, correct?
2. For customers just doing backup copies of replication for their own systems, do they usually setup VPNs across WAN links?

Many thanks,
Neil.

[Vitaliy S.]

1. Yes, service provider will need a per-VM license for Cloud Connect.
2. Yes, if there is no service provider involved and some customer would like to send backups to his own offsite location, then VPN is needed, otherwise backup traffic will not be secured.