Learning veeam backup replication for VMware vsphere

Veeam Backup & Replication v7 for VMware supports VMware vSphere and VMware Infrastructure 3 VI3, including the latest version VMware vSphere 5.5 and Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 as

Learning Veeam ® Backup

& Replication for VMware

vSphere

Learn how to protect your data in your VMware vSphere

Christian Mohn

BIRMINGHAM - MUMBAI

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Learning Veeam Backup & Replication for VMware vSphere

Copyright © 2014 Packt Publishing

All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews

Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy

of the information presented However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied Neither the author, nor Packt Publishing, and its dealers and distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book

Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.First published: April 2014

About the Author

Christian Mohn is a VMware vExpert, an IT industry veteran, and a blogger with more than 16 years of real-world experience Christian currently works as a virtualization architect for Norway's largest IT company EVRY, where he designs and implements virtualization solutions for enterprise clients as well as serves as the Tech Champion for server virtualization

Prior to joining EVRY, he was the Infrastructure Manager for a large Norwegian shipping company, where he introduced virtualization throughout the organization

He is also one of the hosts of the vSoup Virtualization Podcast and is well known for his contributions to the virtualization community through his virtualization blog vNinja.net

Christian lives in Bergen, Norway, with his wife and two kids

He was one of the technical reviewers of VMware vSphere 5.1 Cookbook, Abhilash GB,

Packt Publishing, and wrote the foreword for Building End-User Computing Solutions with VMware View, Mike Laverick and Barry Coombs, Lulu.

In addition to this, he has written whitepapers and held several technical webinars for Veeam®

First and foremost, I would like to thank my wife and kids Without their patience and encouragement, this book would never have been published The same goes for

my employer EVRY, who has been very supportive of this project

I would also like to thank Packt Publishing for giving me the opportunity to become

a published author, especially Neha Nagwekar (Acquisition Editor), Sageer Parkar (Project Coordinator), and Arvind Koul (Content Development Editor)

Special thanks to the technical reviewer who has taken time out of his very busy schedule to assist me in improving the content of the book I know a project like this consumes large amount of time; your assistance is greatly appreciated!

Last but not least—look mom, I'm an author!

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About the Reviewer

Michael L Ellerbeck is an Information Technology enthusiast He enjoys writing, and his ramblings can be found at michaelellerbeck.com

Michael enjoys a lot of different things He likes data and is interested in information management in general He has a master's degree in Information Management from the University of Washington

Overall he enjoys finding solutions and integrating things to become greater than the sum of its parts

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Table of Contents

Preface 1 Chapter 1: Introduction to Veeam® Backup & Replication v7

Recovery point objective and recovery time objective 6Native tape support 7Veeam® Backup & Replication architecture 7Veeam® Backup & Replication components 8

Configuring a virtual backup proxy 27

Summary 50

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Chapter 3: Restoring Data 51

Performing a replica failover/failback 78

Understanding SureBackup and SureReplica 83 Universal Application-Item Recovery (U-AIR) 85

Veeam ® Backup Enterprise Manager 88

1-Click VM Restore 90vSphere Web Client plugin 91

In recent years, virtualization has taken the data center by storm and revolutionized how data centers are being run The opportunities presented by virtualization give us the ability to run a dynamic data center, with quick provisioning

of new applications and capabilities To be able to keep up with this ever-changing environment, your backup infrastructure needs to be able to grow with you

and provide the same kind of flexibility

Learning Veeam ® Backup & Replication for VMware vSphere provides the basic

information required to get you up and running with arguably the best data

protection software available for VMware vSphere virtualized environments

Veeam® Backup & Replication v7 operates at the virtualization layer without

the need to deploy backup agents to the VMs and the applications it protects

It accomplishes this by utilizing the built-in functionality of the hypervisor, thus reducing complexity and implementation overhead

The backups are set up as job-driven processes, where a single backup job can be configured to back up one or more VMs in a single job The backup job defines when, what, and how the backup is performed as well as its target storage

location—the backup repository

What this book covers

Chapter 1, Introduction to Veeam ® Backup & Replication v7 for VMware, provides

an introduction to Veeam® Backup & Replication v7 for VMware, highlighting the various components and architecture as well as providing an introduction

to common backup strategies and terms

Chapter 2, Configuring Backups, explains what backup repositories are, the various

backup transport modes available, and how to protect your virtual infrastructure both with disk-based and tape-based backups

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Chapter 3, Restoring Data, shows how virtual machines, and data, can be restored

from backup quickly and efficiently

Chapter 4, Replicating Virtual Machines, explains how replication is used and how

it differs from ordinary backups

Chapter 5, Other Features, goes through the other features available, such as

SureBackup and Replication, Quick Migration, and the Universal

Application-Item Restore wizards

What you need for this book

To follow the guides in this book, you need a working vSphere 5.5 environment with VMware vCenter configured In addition to Veeam® Backup & Replication v7, you will also need Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 In case you are missing any of these components, trial versions of all the required software are available for download from the vendors websites

Who this book is for

This book is aimed at vSphere administrators looking for an introduction to

Veeam® Backup & Replication v7 for VMware If you are interested in learning how you can set up a basic infrastructure, this book is for you Some knowledge

of VMware vSphere environments is assumed as well as basic knowledge of

Microsoft Server operating systems

Conventions

In this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between

different kinds of information Here are some examples of these styles, and an

explanation of their meaning

Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows:

"By default Veeam® Backup & Replication creates a backup repository at C:\backup."

New terms and important words are shown in bold Words that you see on the

screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: "Review the

settings you just made, and click on Finish to complete the configuration."

[ 3 ]

Warnings or important notes appear in a box like this

Tips and tricks appear like this

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Veeam Backup & Replication v7 for VMware supports VMware vSphere and

VMware Infrastructure 3 (VI3), including the latest version VMware vSphere

5.5 and Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 as the management server(s)

Its modular approach and scalability make it an obvious choice regardless of

the environment size or complexity As your data center grows, Veeam Backup

& Replication grows with it to provide complete protection for your environment.Remember, your backups aren't really that important, but your restore is!

In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:

• Veeam Backup & Replication v7 for VMware components and architecture

• Backup strategies

• Installing Veeam Backup & Replication v7

Backup strategies

A common train of thought when dealing with backups is to follow the 3-2-1 rule:

• 3: Keep three copies of your data—one primary and two backups

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• 2: Store the data in two different media types

• 1: Store at least one copy offsite

This simple approach ensures that no matter what happens, you will be able to have

a recoverable copy of your data

Veeam Backup & Replication lets you accomplish this goal by utilizing the backup

copy jobs Back up your production environment once, then use the backup copy

jobs to copy the backed-up data to a secondary location, utilizing the Built-in WAN Acceleration features and to tape for long-term archival You can even "daisy-chain" these jobs to each other, which ensures that as soon as the backup job is finished, the copy jobs are fired automatically This allows you to easily accomplish the 3-2-1 rule without the need for complex configurations that makes it hard to

manage Combining this with a Grandfather-Father-Son (GFS) backup media

rotation scheme, for tape-based archiving, ensures that you always have a

recoverable media available In such a scheme, there are three, or more,

backup cycles: daily, weekly, and monthly

The following table shows how you might create a GFS rotation schedule:

Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday

WEEK 1

"Grandfather" tapes are kept for a year, "Father" tapes for a month, and "Son" tapes for a week

In addition, quarterly, half-yearly, and/or annual backups could also be separately retained if required

Recovery point objective and recovery time objective

Both these terms come into play when defining your backup strategy The recovery

point objective (RPO) is a definition of how much data you can afford to lose If you

run backups every 24 hours, you have, in effect, defined that you can afford to lose

up to a day's worth of data for a given application or infrastructure If that is not the

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The recovery time objective (RTO) is a measure of the amount of time it should

take to restore your data and return the application to a steady state How long can your business afford to be without a given application? 2 hours? 24 hours?

A week? It all depends, and it is very important that you as a backup administrator have a clear understanding of the business you are supporting to evaluate these important parameters

Basically, it boils down to this: If there is a disaster, how much downtime can your business afford? If you don't know, talk to the people in your organization who know Gather information from the various business units in order to assist

in determining what they consider acceptable Odds are that your views as an

IT professional might not coincide with the views of the business units; determine their RPO and RTO values, and determine a backup strategy based on that

Native tape support

By popular demand, native tape support was introduced in Veeam Backup

& Replication v7 While the most effective method of backup might be disk

based, lots and lots of customers still want to make use of their existing

investment in tape technology

Standalone drives, tape libraries, and Virtual Tape Libraries (VTL) are all

supported and make it possible to use tape-based solutions for long-term

archival of backup data

Basically any tape device recognized by the Microsoft Windows server on which Backup & Replication is installed is also supported by Veeam If Microsoft Windows recognizes the tape device, so will Backup & Replication It is recommended that customers check the user guide and Veeam Forums (http://forums.veeam.com) for more information on native tape support

Veeam Backup & Replication consists of several components that together make

up the complete architecture required to protect your environment

This distributed backup architecture leaves you in full control over the deployment, and the licensing options make it easy to scale the solution to fit your needs Since

it works on the VM layer, it uses advanced technologies such as VMware vSphere

Changed Block Tracking (CBT) to ensure that only the data blocks that have

changed since the last run are backed up This ensures that the backup is performed

as quickly as possible and that the least amount of data needs to be transferred each time

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By talking directly to the VMware vStorage APIs for Data Protection (VADP),

Veeam Backup & Replication can back up VMs without the need to install agents

or otherwise touch the VMs directly It simply tells the vSphere environment that

it wants to take a backup of a given VM; vSphere then creates a snapshot of the

VM, and the VM is read from the snapshot to create the backup Once the backup

is finished, the snapshot is removed, and changes that happened to the VM while

it was being backed up are rolled back into the production VM

By integrating with VMware Tools and Microsoft Windows VSS, application-consistent backups are provided but only if they are available in the VMs that are being backed

up For Linux-based VMs, VMware Tools are required and its native quiescence option is used

Not only does it let you back up your VMs and restore them if required, but you can also use it to replicate your production environment to a secondary location

If your secondary location has a different network topology, it helps you remap and re-IP your VMs in case there is a need to failover a specific VM or even an entire datacenter

Of course, failback is also available once the reason for the failover is rectified and normal operations can resume

The Veeam Backup & Replication suite consists of several components, which in combination, make up the backup and replication architecture

• Veeam backup server: This is installed on a physical or virtual Microsoft

Windows server Veeam backup server is the core component of an

implementation, and it acts as the configuration and control center that coordinates backup, replication, recovery verification, and restore tasks

It also controls jobs scheduling and resource allocation, and is the main entry point for configuring the global settings for the backup infrastructure.The backup server uses the following services and components:

° Veeam Backup Service: This is the main component that coordinates

all operations, such as backup, replication, recovery verification, and restore tasks

° Veeam Backup Shell: This is the application user interface.

[ 9 ]

° Veeam Backup SQL Database: This is used by the other components

to store data about the backup infrastructure, backup and restore jobs, and component configuration This database instance can

be installed locally or on a remote server

° Veeam Backup PowerShell Snap-in: These are extensions to Microsoft

Windows PowerShell that add a set of cmdlets for management of backup, replication, and recovery tasks through automation

&Replication will distribute the backup workload between available backup

proxies, thus reducing the load on the backup server itself and increasing the

amount of simultaneous backup jobs that can be performed

Backup repository

A backup repository is just a location where Veeam Backup & Replication can store backup files, copies of VMs, and metadata Simply put, it's nothing more than a folder on the assigned disk-based backup storage

Just as you can offload the backup server with multiple proxies, you can add

multiple repositories to your infrastructure and direct backup jobs straight to

them to balance the load

The following repository types are supported:

• Microsoft Windows or Linux server with local or directly attached storage:

Any storage that is seen as a local/directly attached storage on a Microsoft Windows or Linux server can be used as a repository That means that there is great flexibility when it comes to selecting repository storage; it can be locally

installed storage, iSCSI/FC SAN LUNs, or even locally attached USB drives.

When a server is added as a repository, Veeam Backup & Replication

deploys and starts the Veeam transport service, which takes care of the communication between the source-side transport service on the Veeam backup server (or proxy) and the repository This ensures efficient data transfer over both LAN and WAN connections

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• Common Internet File System (CIFS) shares: CIFS (also known as Server

Message Block (SMB)) shares are a bit different as Veeam cannot deploy

transport services to a network share directly To work around this, the transport service installed on a Microsoft Windows proxy server handles the connection between the repository and the CIFS share

Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager is an optional component that is intended for larger implementations, where you have multiple Veeam backup servers and want

a consolidated management view through a web interface It can control, manage, and monitor all jobs in your enterprise, and it also offers the ability to search for Microsoft Windows guest OS files across all current and archived backups and restore them with one click!

Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager uses the following additional components:

• Veeam Enterprise Manager SQL Database: This is an additional SQL

database used by the Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager to store data and configuration Not to be confused with the SQL database that the Veeam backup server utilizes This database instance can also be installed either locally or remotely

• Veeam Backup Catalog Service: This indexes guest OS file systems to enable

searching inside the virtual machine backups by creating index data stored

in the Veeam Backup Catalog folder on the Veeam backup server; if

configured, this works with Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager and

even with a dedicated Microsoft Search Server

Using U-AIR wizards

Universal Application-Item Recovery (U-AIR) are standalone components that can

be installed and upgraded independently from the Veeam Backup & Replication suite They can be installed on any machine in your production environment and are used to restore single items from any virtualized application

There are specific versions for Active Directory, Microsoft SQL, Microsoft

SharePoint, and Microsoft Exchange that enable wizard-based application object recovery An example of this could be the recovery of a single-user account from Active Directory or a single mail from Microsoft Exchange

[ 11 ]

Technically, U-AIR fires up a backed-up VM in an isolated environment and lets you restore data directly to your production environment without having to restore the entire VM You can think of it as having a live copy of your VM, or VMs, that you can copy data from without it interfering with your live production environment.For applications that Veeam Backup & Replication does not provide specific U-AIR wizards for, you can still restore single files or objects by connecting to a VM stored

in your backup repository and manually restoring items using the application's native management tools

Built-In WAN Acceleration

One of the most common challenges backup administrators meet is to move large volumes of data between remote sites for safekeeping Veeam Backup & Replication Enterprise Plus includes a WAN Acceleration feature to help minimize the amount

of data that needs to be transferred over the wire This helps in reducing the time

it takes to copy a backup job from one repository to another as well as reducing complexity and eliminating the need to transfer redundant data blocks

This feature can provide up to 50 times faster transfers between sites, making it

possible to create offsite backup copies more often than ever before The WAN Accelerator is a software component that you can install on existing Veeam backup servers, or proxies, or even standalone servers, and is especially designed for moving Veeam backup data across WAN links

It compares the data blocks at both ends before transferring data, to make sure that data that already exists on the destination does not get copied over the WAN link

Comparing editions

Veeam Backup & Replication comes in a total of four different versions, each with different feature sets available: Free, Standard, Enterprise, and Enterprise Plus.The Veeam Backup & Replication Free Edition, provides a subset of the functionality provided in the paid editions, but in general, it lets you back up an unlimited

amount of VMs, with no limits on the number of hosts or CPU sockets

The Veeam Backup & Replication Free Edition does provide the following

strong features:

• Ad-hoc backups

• Veeam Explorer for Exchange

• Veeam Explorer for SharePoint

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• Veeam Explorer for Storage Snapshots

• Quick Migration for VMware

• File copy jobs

• VM copy jobs

• FastSCP Editor

• Native tape support

• File-level recovery from backups

• Whole VM recovery from backups

• VM file (VMDK/VHD) recovery from backups

The main limitations of the Veeam Backup & Replication Free Edition are as follows:

• Full backups of individual VMs only—no scheduled, incremental, or

The paid versions—Standard, Enterprise, and Enterprise Plus offer expanded

functionality depending on the licensed version

In general, Standard provides basic backup and recovery functionality but lacks some of the advanced features that are available in Enterprise, such as SureBackup for automated recovery testing and replication, and it also has limited tape support The Enterprise edition adds these features and Enterprise Plus adds backup

capabilities from Storage Snapshots, Built-in WAN Acceleration, and the

self-service recovery options

For a detailed comparison between the different editions, visit http://www.veeam.com/backup-version-standard-enterprise-editions-comparison.html

Before we start, please make sure you have checked the following checklist:

• Make sure you have sufficient disk space available for your repository

[ 13 ]

• Download the latest version from www.veeam.com; you will need to register

an account to download, but this also gives you a 30-day trial version to play around with At the time of writing, v7.0.0.690 is the current version Before installing, you should always check for updates or hotfixes, and you can do

so easily by visiting http://www.veeam.com/patches.html

• The download comes as a iso file, essentially a disk image, which you need to mount to be able to access the installer Since we are installing

on a Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 server, all you need to do is

to double-click on the downloaded ISO file to mount it

Thankfully this is a pretty standard Microsoft Windows-based installation

procedure, so most steps will be familiar to anyone who has installed software

on Microsoft Windows already

Once downloaded and mounted on your server, perform the following steps

to install:

1 Open the drive that contains the mounted ISO file

2 Click on Install under Veeam Backup & Replication to get started The Veeam Backup & Replication welcome screen pops up; click on Next to continue, and accept the license agreement on the following screen Click on Next

again to continue

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3 Now we need to provide a valid license file If you have a license file available, browse to it now and add it If you don't have one, don't worry, you can still install it, but it will be limited to operating in free mode until you provide one Note that if you have a valid license, you can always log into www.veeam.comand request that a new copy to be e-mailed to the support contact.

4 The next step is to select which components you want to have installed The default option of installing Veeam Backup & Replication and Veeam Backup Catalog is fine The Veeam Backup & Replication PowerShell SDK

is only needed if you want to use the same server as an entry point for the PowerShell scripting of Veeam

5 The installer then proceeds to do a system configuration check, where it checks if the prerequisites have been met Thankfully, the installer is pretty clever, and if anything is missing, it will notify you and install the required components directly from the installer

[ 15 ]

6 Click on Install to install the missing components.

7 The next step is to define a user account that the Veeam Backup & Replication services run, which is usually referred to as a service account During setup,

it is recommended to use an account that has local administrator permissions

on the Veeam backup server Note that this user also needs to have database owner rights on the Veeam database, and it is especially important to note

if you are planning on using an external SQL server instance for Veeam

Backup &Replication The user account also requires full-control NTFS

permissions on the catalog folder (repository) on the Veeam Backup

& Replication Server For details on the required permissions for the

different components, visit http://helpcenter.veeam.com/backup/70/vsphere/required_permissions.html

8 In this setup, I'm using a domain administrator account, but in real-world scenarios, a dedicated service account should be created in the Active

Directory before running the installer, and that user should be assigned during the installation Note that this is not necessarily the same account which will be communicated to vCenter or the ESXi hosts That is

a designated account setup after the install

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9 Now we need to select a SQL Server instance My lab setup runs using

a local SQL Server instance that the installer sets up during installation, but if you want to use an external SQL Server instance, now is the time to provide its details For large enterprise environments, having an external SQL Server instance is highly recommended, whereas for smaller setups and test environments, the locally installed instance would do

Once that part is done, continue the installation by yet again finding the

Next button.

10 The next screen shows the Veeam Backup & Replication TCP/IP port configuration; if required in your environment, these can be changed but for most installs, the default ports are fine There is only one step left now

before the installation starts Clicking on the Next button moves us along

to the Directory Configuration screen.

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11 This step lets you configure the location for the vPower NFS root folder, which

is used when mounting VM disks from backup for restore processes, and the

Guest file system catalog, which is used for indexing of backed-up files inside

the VMs A dedicated, minimum 10 GB space for vNFS is recommended

In my environment, I have used a dedicated volume that has 50 GB storage space for this purpose And that's it; the install is now ready to start with the installation of a local MS SQL Server 2008 R2 Express instance If you are using, as recommended, a special service account for Veeam, make sure that the user account has Full Control permissions for the folders

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12 Review the setup, and click on Install for the installation to start.

13 Next, we need up is to upgrade Veeam Backup & Replication to the latest R2 version, which is required for Microsoft Windows 2012 R2 and vSphere 5.5 support Make sure you visit http://www.veeam.com/patches.html for the latest releases and patches before installing

14 For now, the R2 version comes as a separate download from www.veeam.com, which needs to be installed after the main v7.0 installation is done R2 is a patch release, and Veeam has not yet provided an ISO download that has this update included in the installation media Thankfully updating to R2 is simple Run the R2 upgrade file, veeam_backup_7.0.0.764.R2_setup.exe, and it will upgrade to 7.0 Cumulative Patch 2 without any input required at all

15 Finally we have Veeam Backup & Replication installed and patched with the latest update Start Veeam Backup & Replication from the icon on the desktop, or from the start menu, and on the first run after running the

patch, the Components Update screen appears Click on Next to update

the installed components to the new versions included in R2

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16 Let the installer work its magic and upgrade the components to the latest

version by clicking on Next, and you should be ready to go!

1 Click on Backup Infrastructure to bring up the configuration pane Right-click

on the right-hand side pane and select Add Backup Repository This brings

up the New Backup Repository configuration window.

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2 Give the repository a name and click on Next Since this is a Microsoft

Windows server, go with the default Microsoft Windows Server option

and click on Next The next screen configures which server the repository

resides on; since this is on the local server, the default of this server is fine

Click on Next.

3 Now we can specify the location of the repository Click on Browse to

pick a location; in my case, I have a dedicated volume for this backup repository (G:\), which has a folder on it called Backup For larger setups and environments, you might want to name the folder something less generic The folder naming is entirely up to you, so choose something that makes it easy to identify in your environment Select your desired backup repository location, and as the rest of the default settings are ok, so click

[ 21 ]

5 Go over the review screen to make sure everything is correct, and click on

Next to create the repository The new repository is created, and we can now

delete the default one to make sure that the C:\ volume on the server doesn't get filled with backup data As we all know, a Microsoft Windows server with a full C:\ drive is not a happy server, so changing this location is a very good idea

6 Before we can remove it, we need to move Backup & Configuration

(configuration backup) as well, as this by default is located in the default backup repository To do this, select the configuration backup option from the menu, and change the backup repository from the default to the newly

created one Once that is done, right-click on the Default Backup Repository and select Remove.

7 Click on Yes on the pop up to remove it New configuration backups should

now be directed to the new backup repository along with other backup jobs that we configure later

8 Now we can connect to our VMware vCenter and configure up backup jobs!

Click on Virtual Machines and then on Add Server A new window appears,

where you can select the type of server you want to register with Veeam

Backup & Replication Select VMware vSphere, and enter your vCenter

fully qualified domain name (FQDN) or IP address

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9 Next up is your VMware vCenter credentials Click on Add…, enter your details, and click on Next to continue The credentials vary from environment

to environment, so if you are unsure which credentials to use, contact

your VMware administrator, but vCenter administrator access is required

It is recommended that you create and use, a dedicated Veeam Backup

& Replication user account for this Once the connection is successful, a summary screen appears, and you can finish the configuration You can

now expand VMware vSphere and see your vCenter and its clusters, hosts,

vApps, and VMs directly in the Veeam Backup & Replication console

10 And that's it! You now have a working Veeam Backup & Replication v7 installation set up, which is connected to your vSphere infrastructure

and is ready for the configuration of new backup jobs

Summary

This chapter has provided an introduction to the components and architecture that make up a Veeam Backup & Replication v7 infrastructure It has also provided some background information regarding a couple of key data retention principles, such as the 3-2-1 rule and GFS In addition to this, a basic installation has been

Configuring Backups

Before we dive into configuring the actual backup jobs, there are a couple of key parts of the backup infrastructure that we need to address

Backup repositories

A backup repository contains three different file types:

• vbk: These files are the full VM image backups

• vib or vrb: These files are used to store incremental changes to VM images

• vbm: These files are the backup metadata files that contain information

on the backup job, VMs in the backup, restore points, and so on

This modular approach means that you can copy a backup from one repository

to another and still keep the backup job information associated with it Just as VMs are portable in a virtualized environment, Veeam Backup & Replication backup jobs are portable as well In fact, you can copy them manually between repositories

if so desired

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Backup transport modes

Several transport modes are supported depending on how your infrastructure is configured For VMware vSphere setups, the following apply The Veeam transport service runs on the backup proxy server, which can also be the backup server itself, and is configured there For retrieving data, the following three modes are offered

through the vSphere APIs for Data Protection (VADP):

• Direct SAN Access: This is the most efficient method of transfer and is

available if you have installed the backup proxy server on a physical server with direct Fiber Channel access to the SAN For iSCSI SAN setups, the proxy server can be installed either on a physical host or on a virtual host that has direct access to the SAN

• Virtual Appliance: This mode is available if the backup proxy is installed

on a virtual machine and works by utilizing SCSI hot-add to attach the disks of the backed-up VM to the backup proxy VM, thus not traversing the network when performing the backup

• Network: When utilizing the Network mode, all data is transferred over

the LAN, and this is usually not recommended due to the saturation of network links and general backup speed when compared to the other methods You can consider this to be the "last resort mode" that Veeam Backup & Replication offers unless there is a 10 GbE network available, which would make the Network mode recommended option

If you do not have a physical Veeam Backup & Replication server that has direct access to the SAN, deploy a VM with a Veeam proxy server installed to speed up the backup process

Backup modes

When you back up VMs, there are two methods available to you: incremental backup and reversed incremental backup

in the vib files, accompanying the VMs' vbk file.

As illustrated in the following diagram, this option requires the least storage space

in your backup repository:

Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday

.vbk

This is an efficient way of performing backups since you only store one full copy, and after that, it's just increments It does, however, have an impact when you need to restore a backup In order to restore a VM, or even a file, Veeam Backup

& Replication needs to combine all the increments since the last full backup to find the desired restore point when restoring, and with a lot of incremental backups, this can be a time and IO-consuming process It also means you need to keep

your original full backup stored in your repository until a new full backup has been performed

To solve this problem, Veeam Backup & Replication adds a feature called

incremental backup with synthetic full

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Incremental backup with synthetic full

The incremental backup with synthetic full method instructs the Veeam Backup & Replication server to combine full backups (.vbk) and incremental (.vib) backups into a synthetic full backup in your repository Instead of requesting a new full backup from the production environment, it combines the bits you already have into a new full backup without the need to perform a full backup cycle

Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday

In short, it lets you reduce the amount of required storage space in your repository Instead of storing both the full and the synthetic full backups, you will only have one synthetic full backup on disk

Reversed incremental backup

As with incremental backups, a full backup is performed on the first run, and

subsequent backups are incremental So what's the difference? After the incremental backup has been performed, the Veeam Backup & Replication server combines the changes in the incremental file with the full backup, thus always ensuring that the last restore point is a full backup

Last Restore Point

This lets you maintain a forever-incremental backup scheme, and saves disk space in your repository since you only have to store one full backup in the repository When the number of restore points defined in your retention policy is exceeded, the oldest reversed increment is deleted This method provides the fastest restore to a recent state since the last restore point always is a full backup If you need to restore to an earlier restore point, the required vrb files and vbk files are combined to let you access the requested restore point

Which method should you choose? Well, as any good consultant will say, it depends

If you want to only keep your backups on disk, reversed incremental is your best option as it saves on disk space usage It is worth noting that if deduplication is used, incremental mode is preferred to enhance deduplication ratios If you want

to keep secondary backup copies on tape, the default incremental method is the best fit Reversed incremental mode changes the archive bit on the vbk file, thus triggering a full backup to tape after every backup has been performed With

incremental jobs, this only happens when synthetic backups are performed so that the amount of data written to tape each time is significantly reduced

Configuring a virtual backup proxy

In Chapter 1, Introduction to Veeam ® Backup & Replication v7 for VMware, we set up

our first Veeam Backup & Recovery server, with a local repository, on a physical host Since we do not want to use the slower Network transport mode, we need

to configure a backup proxy to speed up the backup process

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1 Prepare a VM that can act as a backup proxy I have used a fresh Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 VM for this purpose.

The GUI-less Windows Server 2012 Core edition is a prime candidate for backup proxies Since these are remotely managed through Veeam Backup & Replication, there is no need for a local GUI Running on the Core edition uses less memory and disk resources, and since there are fewer things to manage on a Server Core installation, it requires less patching and other maintenance

2 Open the Veeam Backup & Replication management console, and click on

the Backup Infrastructure icon.

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3 Right-click on Backup Proxies, and select Add VMware Backup Proxy.

4 When the New VMware Proxy window appears, click on Add New , enter the DNS name or IP address of your proxy server, and then click on Next.

5 Click on Add and enter your domain credentials Note that this account

needs to have local administrator access for the server being added Click

on Next to continue.

6 Review the settings on the next screen, and click on Next to continue

installing the required services

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