(tryllz) 1

Hi all,

I’m doing Veeam B&R setup and need to understanding something.

I have a Windows Server with 1 interface, 1Gb, Veeam will be installed on this.

I have ESXi with 2 interfaces 1Gbps [Management], and 10Gbps [Storage].

I have Storage with 1 interface, 10Gb [Storage].

Because Veeam requires repository configuration, does it require a 10Gb interface as well or is Windows Server is only acting as a Management plane for the storage and no storage data passes through the Windows Server ?

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Thank You

7 Spice ups
2

When you install Veeam on the server, it also install the Proxy that will process the data blocks. Veeam doesn’t not need the 10Gb interface. Please note that for Windows VMs, adding them to the backup also will deploy Proxies which can help with the performance.

3 Spice ups
3

Digging deep in my memory for this one.

I seem to remember putting a Veeam agent on one of the VMs in ESXi and that was the data mover to storage. So if you don’t have any other agent then yes the data would go through the windows server.

4

I know this is from IBM, but it may better explain the proxies for you. IBM Cloud Docs

(tryllz) 5

Thanks all,

Clarifies a lot, the proxy link helps a lot as well…

I will be deploying a linux proxy on the ESXi as well…

6

A proxy server on the same VLAN/Subnet as the VMs will be quicker vs those on different subnets as they will have to traverse the network.

7

Thanks @Rod-IT

Something I had doubts about, now its clear, but shouldn’t the proxy be on the Storage network as the Storage network is 10Gbps on the wire ?

Appreciate it…

8

Proxies should sit on the VLAN the VMs are on to avoid network based backup.

Nothing stopping you putting them on the storage network, but if the VMs are not, backups will still be network based.
If this is all new to you, build 2 proxies, one on the VM network and one on the storage network, when you configure a backup, disable automatic proxy, specify the VM one and do a full, then edit the backup job, change the proxy to the storage network one and do another full.

Pay attention to the logs on screen as it runs.

Your results may be the same, in terms of speed.

1 Spice up
9

Definitely new to this, this help a lot…

Well explained, thanks @Rod-IT, makes things clearer…

10

If I recall correctly, Veeam prefers the proxies on the same VLAN as the ESXi management interface. Maybe that’s the same VLAN as the VMs in your environment, but I figured it should be mentioned. I have our proxies on the ESXi management interface and it’s able to hot-add the VM disks to the proxies for the backups. No backup traffic goes through the Veeam server in this scenario. I originally had our proxies on the same VLAN as our other VMs, but when that was the case Veeam gave me a warning of “No proxy found on the management network” or something along those lines (that was a few years ago and probably a few Veeam versions ago)

@tryllz How is your TrueNAS repository connected to Veeam? If NFS/CIFS you’ll want to make one of the proxy VMs the Gateway server, otherwise the backup traffic will go through the Windows Veeam server (and the 1GB network) to write to the repository. If it’s connected via iSCSI to the Windows server then you’ll have the same issue. If it’s added directly as a Linux repository then the backup traffic should be able to go directly from the proxy VMs to the repository, bypassing the Windows server and the 1GB network.

11

Correct, that is what the proxy is for, and the proxy should be as close to the VMs it is backing up, same VLAN is ideal.

FYI, my proxies are not on the management VLAN, nor are any VMs.

General-Purpose Backup Proxies - User Guide for Microsoft Hyper-V (veeam.com)

VMware Backup Proxies - User Guide for VMware vSphere (veeam.com)

Some quick reads above.

12

I have a few questions before I can think of a correct response ??

  1. What are the 2 ESXi and vCenter version and edition ?
  2. How many NIC ports or Interfaces does the ESXi have ? There should be a mix of storage, vMotion, management, LAN etc where some of the features can share NIC port(s).
  3. Is the VBR 11.x or VBR 12.x installed as a VM on one of the ESXi ?
  4. Where is the Backup Repository ?
13

Thanks, this is something I have been trying to figure out.

All management traffic traverse through 1Gbps interfaces.

All storage traffic traverses through 10Gbps interfaces.

If the Proxies are added to ESXi management VLAN then won’t it all process VMs at 1Gbps and cause a bottleneck in Veeam since the source traffic is traversing at 1Gbps ?

Initially my understanding was if the Proxy is a VM created on the ESXi and is in the Storage VLAN then all traffic will be processed over 10Gbps interfaces.

But @Rod-IT gave me the idea to test 2 Proxies on different VLAN, 1 in 1Gbps and other in 10Gbps VLAN, currently setting this up to test it…

14

I don’t seem to be receiving email notifications when a reply is added, I’m checking my profile settings…

ESXi are version 7.0.3
vCenter is verseion 7.0.3

ESXi has 4 ports, 2 x 1Gbps, and 2 x 10Gbps

Its 12.1, and yes its installed on a VM on ESXi

Sorry I might not be understanding this question, if you mean physically, they are all in the same location, unless you are asking something…

15

In VBR, you can set up the Backup Repositories (NAS or other storage)

16

Thanks @adrian_ych I’m unsure which question is this answer for…

This is the question that I was not able to formulate words for as things weren’t clear in my head.

Is VBR to be configured to connect to the Production Storage to pull VMs for Backup ?

From the answers I’m understanding No, its not required to…

17

Ok…

Backup Repository is the place where you will store the backup data (or backup data sets).

In VBR, we can set different Backup Repositories…like in your picture, you are using a TrueNAS, likely is a UNC shared drive. You would need to add that UNC path to VBR under Backup Repository.

But where is the Windows server and TrueNAS in your picture ?

In some cases (like mine), we have 3 or more NAS (I just 4 as an example). We use BR in short for Backup Repository,

  • BR-HQ-01, Synology NAS with SSDs
  • BR-HQ-02, Synology NAS with HDDs or Consumer grade SSDs
  • BR-S1-01, Synology NAS with HDDs or Consumer grade SSDs at Remote Site 1
  • BR-Cloud, this is a Cloud based storage linked to VBR

For me all our Server & HQ NAS are using 10Gbps network with 100Mbps to Site-1 and a 50Mbps Internet connection.

We use Veeam Reverse Incremental Backups for backing up all our VMs (VMware 7.x & 8.x).

  • First backup is a full backup then the respective are “Reverse Increments” where increment backup is done then a synthetic full backup is created on the NAS…7 days retention.

  • After which a Veeam Backup Copy is used to Copy the Backup Data Sets to BR-HQ-02 with up to 10 years retention using GFS with 7 days retention (4 weekly, 2 monthly, 3 Quarterly and 10 Annually)…so over 10 years, we would have at least 20 full backups on BR-HQ-02 (reason for using HDD or consumer SSDs).

  • 2nd Veeam Backup Copy is used to copy the Backup Data Sets to BR-S1-01 using time Window (only syncs after 2230 hrs to 0800 hrs daily). This only have GFS (3 weekly) with 14 days retention (mainly used as DR)

  • If you have cloud storage, you can connect it to VBR for use as a DR Backup Repository. But I do find that meaningless unless you can recover to the cloud or if you have very fast Internet download speeds.

Why use Veeam Reverse Increment backup (using a live example) ?

  • One of our eHR VMs (server 2019) uses SQL and its 1.3TB.
  • First Backup took approx 2 hrs, Backup Copy to BR-HQ02 took also another 2 hrs & BR-S01-021 took approx 5 hrs.
  • Subsequent backups took like 4 min (approx 8 GB), Backup Copy to BR-HQ02 took also another 12 min & BR-S01-021 took approx 30 min. Note this does not include the time to do the Synthetic full, but we are not concerned as the load is on the VBR server and the NAS (does not affect source VM).

Then If you have VBR Enterprise Plus or VUL, you can use Veeam WAN Accelerator but you need another VBR server at Remote Site 01 with 80GB for OS (Server 2022 minimum requirements) and approx 50GB (VBR recommends 10GB per OS and 3 GB per VM).
With Veea, WAN Accelerator, the Veeam Backup Copy can reduce the data transfer to our BR-S1-01 from 8GB to below 700MB !!!.

18

Thanks for going into details of your setup @adrian_ych, helps me understand things better, and how to set up configurations for efficient backups…

19

But in your question of 1Gbps or 10Gbps, unless you have very fast Backup Repository media (like SSDs) you may want to still limit the transfer rates (VBR have that option) as you do not want the backup process to fully utilize the entire bandwidth of your vSwitches which may cause VMs to have issues (like Data Store going offline or VMs having timeout issues or VM’s storage issues as the VM’s OS does not know why suddenly their storage suddenly goes from SSD speeds to SATA speeds).

For us, we have 4 1Gbps (all 4 used for LAN) and 4 10Gbps NICs (2 used for storage to SAN, 2 used for LAN). The main reason is that VMware vSwitches can perform its own load balancing and the vSwitch-LAN have 6 NICs in active mode, none on standby.

Then there is no need for proxy VBR server (some say each ESXi needs its own VBR server) but that is not the case as like most backup solutions, the data transfer for backup processes are from the ESXi to the NAS (or backup repository).

You may really want to learn and try out Veeam Reverse Incremental Backup as the Synthetic full backup provides a few benefits

  1. After the 1st full backup, subsequent “increment” backups are small (smaller if you run backup more often).
  2. Unlike Incremental Backups, normally when we recover data or VMs, we would prefer to use the latest backup version.
  3. The creation of the synthetic full backup also acts as a 2nd verification, else the synthetic full cannot be successfully created. This is additional to the backup job verification and/or the post backup Veeam SureBackup (if you need it).
20

The Storage is SSD, just not NVME.

This is something I’m looking forward to as i see it as very efficient.

Thanks a lot @adrian_ych all these pointers are extremely helpful…