Learning Veeam
Backup
& Replication for VMware
vSphere
Learn how to protect your data in your VMware vSphere
infrastructure with Veeam
®Backup & Replication
Christian Mohn
BIRMINGHAM - MUMBAI
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.
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First published: April 2014
Production Reference: 1140414
Published by Packt Publishing Ltd. Livery Place
35 Livery Street
Birmingham B3 2PB, UK.
ISBN 978-1-78217-417-2
www.packtpub.com
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.
Acknowledgments
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!
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
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Table of Contents
Preface 1
Chapter 1: Introduction to Veeam
®Backup & Replication v7
for VMware
5
Backup strategies 5
Recovery point objective and recovery time objective 6
Native tape support 7
Veeam® Backup & Replication architecture 7
Veeam® Backup & Replication components 8
Backup proxy 9
Backup repository 9
Veeam® Backup Enterprise Manager 10
Using U-AIR wizards 10
Built-In WAN Acceleration 11
Comparing editions 11
Installing Veeam® Backup & Replication v7 12
Configuring a repository 19
Summary 22
Chapter 2: Configuring Backups
23
Backup repositories 23
Backup transport modes 24
Backup modes 24
Incremental backup 25
Incremental backup with synthetic full 26
Reversed incremental backup 26
Configuring a virtual backup proxy 27
Configuring a backup job 31
Configuring a tape backup job 35
Adding a remote repository 41
Summary 50
Chapter 3:
Restoring Data
51
Performing Instant VM Recovery 51
Performing Full VM Restore 59
Restoring VM files 60
Restoring VM hard disks 62
Restoring VM Guest files 64
Summary 66
Chapter 4: Replicating Virtual Machines
67
Replication infrastructure 68
Setting up a replication job 69
Replica failover and failback 77
Performing a replica failover/failback 78
Summary 81
Chapter 5:
Other Features
83
Understanding SureBackup and SureReplica 83
Universal Application-Item Recovery (U-AIR) 85
Quick Migration 86
SAN Support 87
vCloud Director support 88
Veeam® Backup Enterprise Manager 88
Veeam® Backup Search 90
1-Click VM Restore 90
vSphere Web Client plugin 91
Summary 92
Preface
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.
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."
[ 3 ]
Warnings or important notes appear in a box like this.
Tips and tricks appear like this.
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Questions
Introduction to Veeam
Backup & Replication
v7 for VMware
Veeam Backup & Replication v7 for VMware is a modern solution for data protection and disaster recovery for virtualized VMware vSphere environments of any size. 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
• 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
MON TUE WED THU WEEK 2
MON TUE WED THU WEEK 3
MON TUE WED THU WEEK 4
MON TUE WED THU MONTH 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
[ 7 ]
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 architecture
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.
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.
Veeam
®Backup & Replication components
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.
[ 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.
Backup proxy
Backup proxies are used to offload the Veeam backup server and are essential as you scale your environment. Backup proxies can be seen as data movers, physical or virtual, that run a subset of the components required on the Veeam backup server.
These components, which include the Veeam transport service, can be installed in a matter of seconds and are fully automated from the Veeam backup server.
You can deploy and remove proxy servers as you see fit, and Veeam Backup
&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.
• 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
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.
[ 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
• 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 multi-VM backups
• No vPower capabilities
• No VM replication
• No scripting
Basically, it lets you perform ad-hoc backups of your infrastructure without the need for licenses.
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.
Installing Veeam
®Backup & Replication v7
Before we start, please make sure you have checked the following checklist:
[ 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.
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.com and 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.
[ 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.
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
[ 17 ]
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.
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
[ 19 ]
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!
Configuring a repository
By default, Veeam Backup & Replication creates a backup repository at C:\backup.
The first thing we need to do is to change that and make sure the repository is stored on a volume with enough free space. Perform the following steps for configuring
a repository:
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.
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 on Next.
4. The vPower NFS setup is the next step; the settings we selected during the
initial installation still apply, so the default options here are fine. Click on
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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.
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
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.
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
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Incremental backup
Incremental backup is the default backup option and is often also referred to as forward incremental backup. When using this method, a full backup is performed
on the first run (.vbk), and subsequent backups only contain the changes detected since the last backup, whether it was full or incremental. These changes are stored 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
Backup Size
.vbk
.vib .vib .vib .vib .vib .vib
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.
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
Backup Size
.vbk
.vib .vib .vib .vib .vib .vib
.vib
.vbk
Synthetic Full
By using this feature, the IO load of performing full backups is placed on the Veeam Backup & Replication server instead of on your production storage environment. You can also instruct the Veeam Backup & Replication server to perform a transform. This process moves previous incremental backups into a reversed incremental chain. 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
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Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday
Backup Size
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.
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.
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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.
7. Once the installation is done, we can configure the proxy server. The defaults
are fine; selecting Automatic Selection for the transport mode will figure out
what the best transport mode is and will configure it correctly based on that.
8. Click on Next to go to the Traffic screen; if you have specific needs with
regards to limiting network traffic between the backup server and the proxy
server, this is the place to configure it. Yet again, click on Next to continue and show the summary screen. Click on Finish to end the installation.
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Configuring a backup job
Now it's time to put all your Veeam Backup & Replication servers, repositories,
and proxy servers to good use and create our first backup job.
1. Open the Veeam Backup & Replication management console, and click on the Backup Job icon on the toolbar.
2. The New Backup Job wizard appears, where you can name your backup job. Enter a suitable name and click on Next.
3. The Virtual Machines window opens, where you can add your VMs to your backup job. Click on Add to bring up the object browser where you can select your VMs from your VMware vSphere infrastructure. Expand the Hosts and Clusters entry to show your VMware vCenter instance. Expand that as well to show your datacenters and yet again to show your clusters.
4. You should now be able to see your hosts on top of the tree view as well as all the registered VMs just below them.
5. Pick the VMs you want to back up using this backup job; use Shift or Alt to select multiple VMs, just as you would in any Microsoft Windows application.
6. One of the great aspects of the object browser is that VMware Backup & Replication jobs can be driven by a number of criteria. The jobs can be driven
by a list of VMs as shown, but also as an inventoried container. Specifically, clicking the context buttons at the top of this figure can switch the inventory
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7. The Virtual Machines window appears again, this time with your selected VMs in the list of VMs to back up. Click on Next to continue.
The Storage window lets you change a lot of the backup settings. Firstly,
it lets you configure which backup proxy the job should utilize—Automatic Selection, the default, is fine in most cases, as it will automatically figure out which available proxies should be used. If you click on Choose..., you should see all your available proxy servers listed. The Backup repository field lets
you choose a specific repository for the job.
The Retention Policy field dictates the number of restore points to keep on disk, and Secondary destinations for this job is where you can configure if the backup should be copied to tape or a remote repository after it finishes.
For now, the default values here are just fine; we'll touch on a few of those
options later on.
If you want to change from the default Incremental to Reversed Incremental, this option is hidden behind the Advanced button. Clicking it will open the Advanced Settings window. In addition to changing the backup method, this is also where you change other advanced settings, such as deduplication, compression levels, and storage integration.
All of these settings can be tweaked after creating the backup job; so, we'll leave those at their default values and click on Next to continue configuring the backup job.
8. Next up are the Guest Processing settings. This is where you define if you want to utilize Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) to ensure transactional consistency and integration with applications that support it
(such as Microsoft Exchange), or if you want to index the files in the VM
for easy search and retrieval from the backup. Both of these options require you to provide valid Guest OS credentials, and you can add these from the Manage Accounts link.
After adding credentials to Veeam Backup & Replication, these will be
available from the dropdown for subsequent backup jobs that are defined
at a later stage. There is also an Advanced button available here, and this is
where you can define specific guest processing options for individual VMs.
If you have mixed Linux and Microsoft Windows VMs in the same backup
job, you may need to configure differentiating credentials for some of the
VMs in the backup job, or remove the VSS integration from the Linux VMs. All options set on the initial Guest Processing screen apply to all VMs in
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9. This is where you define your schedule for the backup jobs. There are quite a few options available to you here; you can schedule Daily Backups, Monthly Backups, Periodical Backups, and After This Job backups. All of these are pretty self-explanatory, perhaps with the exception of the After This Job option. By using that option, you tell Veeam Backup & Replication to only
execute this backup job after another backup job has finished. One typical use
of this option is to daisy-chain a backup copy job to tape after the normal disk-based backup is performed. By utilizing this, you don't need to worry about
timing, scheduling, or waiting for the job to start after another job has finished.
Veeam Backup & Replication takes care of it for you even if a backup job takes a longer, or even shorter, time to perform than you had initially anticipated. For the sake of this initial backup, we'll stick to a "normal" schedule, such as the default proposed Daily at this time at 10:00 PM everyday. The automatic
retry settings are also fine, but you can of course tweak these as you see fit for
your environment. If you have a given backup window, where your backups must be performed, check the Terminate job if it exceeds allowed backup
window, and configure your backup window by clicking the Window button.
10. Click on Create to jump to the summary screen; review the settings; and if you want to immediately run the newly configured backup job, check Run
the job when I click finish, and click on Finish to create the backup job.
Configuring a tape backup job
Now that you have a disk-based backup job configured, it's time to copy that backup to tape media.
It it also possible to copy from one disk-based repository to another, and then in turn, copy that to tape, and daisy-chain those jobs to each other to automate tiered backup chains.
This is a very easy thing to set up; all you need is a tape device that is available on a physical server running the Veeam Backup & Replication server. It is also possible to use Virtual Tape Libraries that act as physical tape devices inside a Virtual Machine. As long as the Windows server that Veeam Backup & Replication runs on sees it as a tape device, it can be used.
The Veeam forums is a great place for dialog on the product, visit http://forums.veeam.com/tape-f29/ to access the tape forum.
This setup will also make use of the After This Job option mentioned when
configuring the initial backup. Like just about everything else in Veeam Backup & Replication, this setup is also wizard driven.
1. Click on the Tape Job option in the Veeam Backup & Replication
management interface. You will now be presented with two options, Files... or Backups.... The Files... option is used if you want to back up specific files from the Veeam Backup & Replication server itself, or from other servers in your environment, to tape. This option does not protect operating system
files, it's just a simple "copy some files to tape" option. The option we are after
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2. You can now specify which backup jobs, or even whole repositories, you
want to copy to tape. Just as when defining a normal backup job, we click
on the Add button to add our backup sources to the job. Select Backup jobs... and then select which backup job you want to copy to tape. If you want to copy an entire repository to tape, choose Backup Repositories and then select the source backup repository. In this walk-through, we are focusing on copying backup jobs to tape, but the procedure for remote repositories is very similar.
After selecting a backup job, click on OK and then on Next to continue the setup.
3. You are now presented with the Media Pool window, where you can select which tape media pool to use for your backups. As long as your tape device is recognized on your Veeam Backup & Replication server, it will be displayed here. If you have more than one tape device, you can choose to use different targets for incremental and full backups. In this case, there
is only a single tape drive available, and the defaults are fine.
4. As usual, the Next button brings you forward to the next step, which is the Options window.
5. Here you can select if you want to use hardware compression or not. In general, there is no need to use this when you back up Veeam Backup
& Recovery files as these are already compressed when they are created.
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For tape libraries, ejecting the tape can potentially stop your next backup cycle as there are no available tapes. Make sure this setting is set to your preference and in accordance with your tape media cycle.
6. The Export current media set once the job finishes option is used with tape changers that have a "mail" slot for easy removal and archiving at,
for instance, a remote office.
Select your preferred options based on your setup and click on Next.
7. Now we move on to the scheduling options, and since this is a backup designed to protect an existing backup to disk job, you want to make
sure that the job runs when the original backup job is finished.
8. Enable the Run the job automatically option, and select the After this job
option. Select the job you defined earlier, and click on Create.
9. Review the summary screen, and click on Finish to finalize the creation of the job. You should now see two jobs in your Veeam Backup & Replication management console.
10. The Backup to Tape job will now be executed as soon as the original backup
job is finished.
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Adding a remote repository
If you want to store backups at a remote location, you will need to add a new repository. The repository can be located on either a Microsoft Windows Server, Linux Server, or even a remote shared (SMB) folder on an NAS box. Be sure to check the user guide and release notes to ensure repositories are built to the resources required. Key resources such as memory and CPU on the proxy server should meet the performance level required of the backup infrastructure.
This is done pretty much in the same manner as setting up a new proxy server. The following is a step-by-step guide:
1. To be able to set up a remote repository, you need to have a remote location available and ready. For this setup, the remote location is a Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 server joined to the same domain as the main location.
2. Open the Veeam Backup & Replication management console, and click on the Backup Infrastructure icon.
3. Right-click on Backup Repositories, and select Add VMware Backup Repository.
4. When the New Backup Repository window appears, give it a name and click on Next.
5. You now get the option to select the type of repository. Since my remote server is a Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 server, I have selected the default Microsoft Windows server option. Select the option that fits your particular infrastructure, and click on Next to continue.
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7. Select, or add new, credentials to use for authenticating to the remote server, and then click on Next to review the settings and finish the installation. The Veeam transport service is now installed on the remote server, and will be registered in the Veeam Backup & Replication database. 8. Click on Next again to view the summary and Finish to close the
setup window.
9. Now we need to define the repository path on the remote server. Click on Browse to find the folder you want the backup files to reside in. If required, you can create a new folder directly from the dialog box by clicking on New Folder. Once that is done, click on OK to close the dialog box and then on Next to continue.
10. In the vPowerNFS window, leave the defaults as they are, for you want to be able to run VMs directly from this backup repository. Click on Next to continue to the review screen, and then click on Next again to install the required components. Once this has been completed, click on Finish to end the remote repository setup. The new repository should now be listed under Backup Repositories in Veeam Backup & Replication.
11. Since this is a remote repository, odds are that this is connected over a WAN
link. If so, you can now configure the built-in WAN Acceleration feature in
Veeam Backup & Replication. The following steps need to be performed at both ends of a WAN link—in this case both on the remote repository and on the local repository.
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13. After performing a few system checks, you are asked to configure the cache settings for the WAN accelerator service. It is recommended that you use at least 10 GB of cache for each operating system used in the infrastructure. The logic in adding a larger cache is that it's easier to get local storage for a cache than it is to get more network bandwidth. It's also important that both sides have this cache size equal and as large as possible. Another recommendation is to place the cache on SSD drives for best performance.
Define a drive and folder for the cache, and then click on Next to proceed.
14. Review the settings in the review screen, and click on Next again to start the installation of the WAN accelerator service on the target server. Once
the installation finishes, click on Next again and then on Finish to close the wizard.
15. Repeat this procedure for the rest of the repository servers that will communicate with each other over a WAN link.
16. After this has been done, you can define a backup job with the remote repository as a target. You can point backup jobs directly to the remote location; but if you want to heed to the 3-2-1 rule mentioned earlier, you will want to have the same backup in three locations, on two media, and with one copy off site.
17. To do so, create a new copy backup job by going back to the Backup & Replication window and clicking on the Backup Copy icon to create a
new job. Give it a meaningful name, define how often you want the copy
to be created, and click on Next.
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19. Click on Next and in the Target screen, make sure the remote repository is selected.
This part of the wizard also allows additional recovery points to be prescribed as full backups, synthetically created from the incremental restore points of the backup copy job. By creating weekly, monthly, quarterly, or annual backups in the remote repository (GFS), companies can keep discrete restore points on the remote storage. Bear in mind, the only practical way to implement a large number of these full backup discrete restore points is to leverage a deduplicating storage system.
20. Click on Next again to bring up the Data Transfer window. This is where
you can define which WAN accelerator service you want to use for this
specific backup copy job. Make sure you select the local repository as the
source and the remote repository as the target, and then click on Next.
21. If there is any time during the day or night that this backup copy between sites should not occur, the Schedule window lets you define that. Once
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22. Review the settings you just made, and click on Finish to complete the
configuration. This setup copies back up data from the local repository to
the remote one as soon as new backup data is detected.
And there we have it, complete 3-2-1 rule coverage with a single backup and two copy jobs at two different locations and media.
By utilizing backup copy jobs, we can achieve flexible retention policies. Keep long-term storage of backup data on cheaper secondary backup media such as tape or even lower-cost disk, and minimize the required restore points on the primary backup repository. This helps minimize backup overhead and lowers the cost of archiving backup data.
Summary
In this chapter, we have gone through the setup of a simple backup job, configured
a copy of the same backup job to tape, and even a copy to a remote repository,
then finished off by configuring the WAN accelerator service. In addition to this, an explanation of the different file types a backup repository contains has been
Restoring Data
Now that we have configured backup jobs and had a look at how we can utilize
the most commonly used backup features in Veeam Backup & Replication v7, it's time to have a look at how we can utilize the restore features. Remember, backups are, in and of themselves, not worth anything until the day you need the data restored. In this chapter, you will learn to use different methods to restore your data depending on the restore scenario at hand.
In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:
• Performing Instant VM Recovery
• Performing Full VM Restore
• Restoring VM files • Restoring VM Guest files
Performing Instant VM Recovery
Instant VM Recovery is the quickest way to get an entire VM up and running from a backup stored in the backup repository. In fact, it doesn't really restore the VM at all; it starts it directly from the backup repository!
Since the recovered VM runs directly from the backup repository, no data is transferred to the vSphere hosts or datastores during the recovery process. The storage is served from the backup repository and other resources, such as CPU, memory, and network, are utilized from the production ESXi hosts. This ensures quick recovery and nearly instant accessibility. Veeam Backup & Replication even lets you migrate to production once the VM has been made accessible to ensure that VMs don't continue running from the temporary location used during Instant VM Recovery. This is basically a standard vSphere Storage vMotion, but it is performed from within the Veeam Backup & Replication interface so that you don't have to change management tools to perform the entire process. If the vSphere environment
does not have Storage vMotion available, Veeam provides Quick Migration to finish
the Instant VM Recovery step. Quick Migration reads the storage from the backup
repository and constructs the VM's disk files on a production datastore. Quick
Migration is covered in more detail in Chapter 5, Other Features.
The following steps outline how to perform Instant VM Recovery:
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You can also perform Instant VM Recovery by opening the Backup & Replication view and selecting the backup node. In the working area, expand the backup job, right-click on the VM(s) you want to restore, and select Instant Recovery.
2. Select the VM you want to recover from within the list of available backup jobs by expanding the backup job and selecting it. Click on Next to continue.
Use the search field to quickly find the VM.
3. Select the restore point you want to use and click on Next.
4. Now you can choose your restore mode. You have two options—Restore to the original location or Restore to a new location, or with different settings.
Jump to step 7 if restoring to the original destination, whereas steps 5 and 6 only apply if restoring to a new location or if you want to change settings.
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5. Select the restore destination for the recovered VM. You can choose the host to place it on and the folder to place it in. You can even choose a new name
for the VM to ensure that it doesn't conflict with an existing VM should one
still be in place. Lastly, you can select a resource pool to place the VM in. Make your selection and click on Next to continue.
6. Now you can select a destination for the virtual disk updates. If you want, you can redirect the disk updates to a datastore available in your VMware vSphere infrastructure as opposed to the default location, which is on the Veeam backup server itself. This can help with I/O performance and speed up your restore, but be aware that this prevents Storage vMotion of the VM in vSphere versions older than 5.0. Make your selections and click on Next again to proceed.
