Mastering Veeam Backup & Replication 10

Protect your virtual environment and implement cloud backup using Veeam technology

Chris Childerhose

• Publisher: Packt Publishing
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781838982232
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Informatique
• Subtopic: Cybersécurité

Gain proficiency in monitoring infrastructure along with focusing on cloud backup and recovery

Key Features

• Explore the 3-2-1 rule of backups in Veeam to keep your data safe
• Gain in-depth knowledge of NAS backups and Scale-Out Repositories to use in your virtual environment
• Discover Veeam's monitoring and reporting utility - Veeam ONE - along with Linux and Window's proxy

Book Description

Veeam is one of the leading modern data protection solutions, and mastering this technology can help you to protect your virtual environments effectively. This book guides you through implementing modern data protection solutions for your cloud and virtual infrastructure with Veeam. You will even gain in-depth knowledge of advanced concepts such as DataLabs, cloud backup and recovery, Instant VM Recovery, and Veeam ONE.

This book starts by taking you through Veeam essentials, including installation, best practices, and optimizations for Veeam Backup & Replication. You'll get to grips with the 3-2-1 rule to safeguard data along with understanding how to set up a backup server, proxies, repositories, and more. Later chapters go on to cover a powerful feature of Veeam 10 – NAS backup. As you progress, you'll learn about scale-out Repositories and best practices for creating them. In the concluding chapters, you'll explore the new proxy option available in both Linux and Windows. Finally, you'll discover advanced topics such as DataLabs, cloud backup and recovery, Instant VM Recovery, and Veeam ONE.

By the end of this book, you will be equipped with the skills you need to implement Veeam Backup & Replication for your environment and disaster recovery.

What you will learn

• Discover the advanced concepts of Veeam Backup & Replication 10
• Master application optimizations based on Veeam best practices
• Understand how to configure NAS backups and work with repositories and proxies
• Explore different ways to protect your backups, including object immutability and cloud backup and recovery
• Discover how DataLabs works
• Understand how Instant VM Recovery allows you to restore virtual machines
• Become well versed in Veeam ONE for monitoring and reporting on your environment

Who this book is for

This Veeam backup book is for IT professionals who have intermediate to advanced-level knowledge of virtualization as well as backups and backup applications. Anyone who needs a reference guide for learning the advanced features of Veeam Backup & Replication and how they are used, including best practices and optimizations, will also find this book useful.

Section 1: Installation – Best Practices and Optimizations

The objective of this section is to teach the reader the best practices and optimizations for installing Veeam. This section will also include the 3-2-1 backup rule for safeguarding data. You will be able to apply the best practices and optimizations to your installation of Veeam.

This section contains the following chapters:

• Chapter 1, Installation – Best Practices and Optimizations
• Chapter 2, The 3-2-1 Rule – Keeping Data Safe

Chapter 1: Installation – Best Practices and Optimization

Veeam Backup & Replication v10 is part of Veeam Availability Suite, which is ready for the modern data center and allows you to back up all of your workloads, including Cloud, Virtual, and Physical. It is simple, yet flexible, when it comes to meeting your most challenging business requirements. In this chapter, we will discuss the installation of the software, what components make up Veeam Backup & Replication v10, and some best practices and optimizations. There will be practical examples throughout the chapter of how to optimize specific elements that make up the Veeam environment. We will also touch on some of the websites, including the Best Practices Guide for Veeam, among others, to give you the resources to help set up Veeam in your environment. As they say with Veeam – It Just Works.

In this chapter, we're going to cover the following main topics:

• Understanding the components of Veeam Backup & Replication
• Understanding the best practices for Veeam installation and setup
• Configuring and optimizing proxy servers
• Setting up repository servers for success
• Understanding the scale-out repository

Technical requirements

To ensure a successful installation, you will require the following:

• A Windows 2016/2019 server with the required disk space to install the application (2012 R2 is also currently supported). Windows 10 and other modern Windows desktop operating systems are also supported.
• The latest ISO file from www.veeam.com, which requires registration on the site and allows you to obtain a trial license. As of the time of writing, version 10.0.1.4854 is the current release.

Understanding the components of Veeam Backup & Replication

The Veeam Backup & Replication software has several components that together make up the complete architecture that is needed to protect your environment.

Veeam Backup & Replication has the following components:

• Backup Server: Installed on either a physical or virtual server, this is the core component of Veeam Backup & Replication that controls and coordinates backups, replication, recovery verification, and restore tasks. It manages job scheduling as well as resource allocation. It also contains global configuration settings for the environment.
• Proxy Server: These are the workhorses of the environment as they offload tasks from the backup server and are the data movers between the backup server and repositories. It is the proxy servers that you can scale to add processing tasks to the environment.
• Repository Server: This is the backup target where all backup files (VBM – metadata, VBK – full backup file, and VIB – incremental) get written. The repository servers can be Windows- or Linux-based and have different filesystems, such as NTFS, ReFS, and XFS.
• Enterprise Manager Server: This server is an optional component and gets installed when you want to manage multiple backup servers in a single pane of glass. You can see backup jobs within your environment from multiple backup servers. Enterprise Manager also allows you to search all Microsoft Windows guest OS files within all current and archived backups with one-click restore. This optional component uses a separate SQL server and backup catalog service for indexing the guest operating systems.
• Built-In WAN Acceleration: This is also an optional component that allows for better movement of data between sites. It helps minimize data transfer by comparing the data blocks before the transfer, so only new blocks are sent across the WAN. It also accelerates backups by up to 50x between sites.
• File Explorers: These are built-in applications used during restore and look very similar to Windows Explorer. They allow you to browse the restore point to select specific files or data to be restored. There are explorers for Active Directory, Microsoft SQL, Oracle, Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft SharePoint, and Microsoft OneDrive for Business.

You can reference the Veeam Backup & Replication File Explorers at the following website:

https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backup/explorers/explorers_introduction.html?ver=100

The following diagram will show all the aforementioned components:

Figure 1.1 – Veeam Backup & Replication components

In a simple setup, where all components are installed on one server but can scale as needed, you will require at least the backup server, proxy server, and repository server.

When you have multiple offices, you may wish to deploy Veeam Backup & Replication in a more advanced setup, as illustrated here:

Figure 1.2 – Advanced or distributed architecture installation

This deployment depicts the advanced or distributed setup of the application across more than one office where Enterprise Manager would see both backup servers.

Now that you have a better understanding of the components that make up Veeam Backup & Replication, we will now get into the installation, as well as best practices and optimizations, in the next section.

Understanding the best practices and optimizations for Veeam installation

The installation of Veeam Backup & Replication v10 is a straightforward process, and this section will go through the operation of the install as well as touch on best practices and optimizations for your environment. Setting up Veeam, if not done right, can lead to components not working correctly and poor performance, among other things. However, if you set up Veeam ...