Veeam B&R 7 Job Setup
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G'Day Lads and Lasses,
When setting up backup jobs in Veeam Backup & Replication, is it best practice to group servers together in backup jobs (i.e. multiple servers per job) or is it better to go with one server = one job?
Currently, I've been using the "one server = one job" approach as I have been hesitant to add multiple servers to a job, thinking that would increase the risk of job failure.
However, this is means I am being flooded with job notification emails.Also, is there an easy way to generate weekly/monthly reports or do I need to get super good at powershell?
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I use one job for multiple servers. If one server fails to backup, the others will still be backed up fine. It's less hassle to manage it that way, and the less hassle you get with backups, the more confident you can feel about being able to restore them when the shit hits the fan. I did have a problem when I removed a server once, as it messed up retention processing, so sometimes if you retire servers it might be easier to create a new job and remove the old job.
The only real downside I've come across is that you end up with one massive backup file, which limits portability. Having lots of small backup files can sometimes be handy. For example, you might want to copy a backup of a VM onto a USB stick in order to restore it onto a standalone Lab server.
I don't currently do any reports, but have you looked into Veeam One? That might be just the tool you need and it comes free with a B&R subscription.
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For most cases, a single backup job will do the trick. However, you may notice the Veeam VM, vCenter, and Veeam proxies being held to last due to resources in use. If you find your jobs being hung up due to that, you may wish to consider moving those items to their own job. This was more of an issue with Veeam 6, though. 7 seems better at working around that issue.
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I agree about Veeam One. I remember attending a recent Veeam user group meeting at which they touted and did some demos of the features of Veeam One, which is completely free if you have Backup and Replication. I have not had time to play with it, but there are certainly a great number of reporting capabilities available with it.
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I've been grouping mine based on their RTO (Tier 1, Tier 2, Tier 3). Tier 3, for example, only runs once per week since the VMs themselves do not change often. Tier 1 and Tier 2 run daily.
I'd recommend putting one Veeam Proxy on each host to help speed the backup process. You can push that role out from inside the Veeam Backup and Recovery console very easily and can easily add to a VM which may be doing something else during the day but is not very active during your backup windows.
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@NetworkNerd said:
I'd recommend putting one Veeam Proxy on each host to help speed the backup process. You can push that role out from inside the Veeam Backup and Recovery console very easily and can easily add to a VM which may be doing something else during the day but is not very active during your backup windows.
Interesting. I typically only run 1 proxy per site, not including the site where the Veeam server is.
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Thanks lads
I think I'll stick to the "One Server = One Job" approach.@NetworkNerd said:
I agree about Veeam One. I remember attending a recent Veeam user group meeting at which they touted and did some demos of the features of Veeam One, which is completely free if you have Backup and Replication. I have not had time to play with it, but there are certainly a great number of reporting capabilities available with it.
Well, that's very interesting. Do you know if you get the full version for free or just grab the gimped free version?
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@nadnerB said:
Thanks lads
I think I'll stick to the "One Server = One Job" approach.@NetworkNerd said:
I agree about Veeam One. I remember attending a recent Veeam user group meeting at which they touted and did some demos of the features of Veeam One, which is completely free if you have Backup and Replication. I have not had time to play with it, but there are certainly a great number of reporting capabilities available with it.
Well, that's very interesting. Do you know if you get the full version for free or just grab the gimped free version?
This should help answer it: http://www.veeam.com/one-licensing-faq.html.
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I use multiple backups jobs because I was used to that and it was faster having multiple jobs on my old backup software. I was not prepared for the speed of VEEAM. It used to take ALL NIGHT to just backup our file server. Now takes 45 minutes for the VEEAM incrementals.
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It's funny I just saw this thread. I've been running single jobs for awhile now and just redid my backup today to do it in one job. Primarily to see how the deduplication will reduce the total backup size, and hopefully the time it takes for me to drop that to tape later. And by the way, Veeam One is pretty awesome.
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Typically, we recommend grouping VMs with similar guest OS into the same job, as it guarantees better deduplication rates. Also, it's worth indeed deploying Veeam ONE, since it provides you with up-to-date information regarding your Virtual, as well as, Backup Infrastructure.
Thanks.
