1

I have been asked by one of our remote offices to recommend backup software for their environment. I run a vmware environment with Unitrends for my setup but unfortunately he runs a different environment that I have little experience with.

He is running a HPE Gen10 server and has Ubuntu installed on the server and is running KVM as its hypervisor for virtualization of Windows and Linux servers.

I am looking for recommendations from people that have experience working with a Ubuntu KVM server that can do complete virtual machine restores and also file level restores.

3 Spice ups
2

Veeam works with KVM.

6 Spice ups
(Sid) 3

Ive been a Veeam fanboy for years and I believe it works great with KVM.

3 Spice ups
4

If it is Ubuntu, https://freefilesync.org/ will do it. Heck, Timeshift will do it. Both free.

2 Spice ups
5

If you are OK with spending some money, I would also recommend Veeam; it works great with KVM. You can run Veeam on a VM, so you don’t have to get a second physical server. I would probably invest in a NAS of some sort for your backup storage (like a Synology or something similar) and also add a cloud or offsite repository as well.

2 Spice ups
6

as others have said Veeam is my go to at home and what we used at the office…they have a community edition you can mess around with to get a feel for how it will work for you and then move to the real deal if its approved.

7

I thought about Veeam but when I looked into Veeam they state they work well with Oracle and RedHat KVM. They are both rpm based linux products but Ubuntu is debian based so I might have to contact them directly to see what they say if Veeam is compatible.

1 Spice up
8

If its backup, its Veeam.
They had unitrends (appliance) when I started at my current employer, my first job was the rip it out and move to Veeam. Never looked back.

I spent years on Backup Exec (20) with a hot/cold experience. Went to veeam about 10 years ago, and never regretted that decision.

1 Spice up
9

I think I just got heartburn.

3 Spice ups
10

Truth. This was a while back so hopefully they have improved, but I fought with a Unitrends appliance for about 2 years before I dumped that sucker in the recycling. Set up Veeam, and the world was a brighter place. :slight_smile:

1 Spice up
11

I did a little looking at their documentation, and it looks like you may be right. Veeam may not natively work with Ubuntu KVM as the hypervisor for image-based backups. You should be able to still back up any of the VMs with the Linux Agent. That may not ideal, but I would still go that route over a lot of the other backup solutions out there. Just my opinion.

12

Maybe worth a look:

All the best.

13

Veeam will connect via APIs, the installer is a Windows based application. So the Linux version probably doesn’t matter so much unless you want agent based backups.

14

I could be wrong.

  • Ubuntu with Linux kernel for KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) is not supported. For the list of linux-kvm kernels for Ubuntu, see Ubuntu documentation.

Taken from
System Requirements for Linux Computers - Veeam Agent Management Guide

For information
Veeam Backup and Replication System Requirements

@rick-veeam can you clarify at all?

15

I love Free File Sync, and I’m a contributor, but that’s not really a viable solution in a business. I use it at home for an offline air gap sync, where I connect a drive periodically, sync it and disconnect it. It’s also the easily to grab drive in an emergency if something like house was on fire type of thing to make sure I don’t lose everything.

You can’t automate that in a work environment unless it’s always online. If it’s always online then it’s not a backup. It’s just something else for ransomware to encrypt.

16

But to be honest, I would then ask him to justify the usage of that hypervisor & HPe Server, especially in terms of backup, DR and redundancy ?

Coz there had been many posts & talking about “best” hypervisor especially after the VMware-Broadcom issue or after the MS no longer have Hyper-v server (2019 is last edition).
But what is the use of a free or “better” hypervisor if the admins do not know how to use or support ? Or what is the use if only 1 person in the whole Enterprise knows how to use & support ? Or there is no formal education to educate admins how to use or support ?

17

The guy is a Linux guru and has been working with Linux for decades and writes his own software to work with Linux. I was the one that suggested to him to start using something more mainstream for backup solutions instead of his current setup since we are both getting older (55+) and we are the only two administrators in the company. I am working towards future proofing the company for when we are gone. If we move everything mainstream then the next administrators will be able to find support instead of trying to support home grown solutions.

18

There was a saying that almost all hackers (people good in programming) are 23 and younger…that age recently dropped to 19 and younger…

At 50, sadly we can no longer be Guru especially of an IT or computing language as what we learnt already have been obsolete for the past 2 decades or 3 decades.

This is what we known as Business Continuity Plans or Business Succession Planning…
I have hired many fresh-grads (Diploma or Bac holders) and throw them directly into the pool to be a “RAID 1” for some admins or even IT managers…
For the 15 odd subsidiaries that using RHEL, Open-source Hypervisors, TrueNAS or non-mainstream applications, these new staff given OTJ-training and 100% “one one one” follow your superior for 6 months…only 3 out of the current 97 applicants have successfully became “RAID 1” over the past 18 years…

Then as a test of relevancy, I would give those applicants a “simple” task…

  • Using Server OS of any kind (Server 20xx, RHEL etc)
  • Produce and application that alerts admin that Domain users’ password is about expire in 14 days
  • Option to change to 30 days
  • Daily email alert if about to expire within 10 days
    Most took approx 2 months to 4 months to produce a semi-completed “project”…even most of my IT managers with their IT team took approx 14 days or 22 days (coz of some debugging & firewall settings etc)…