Help with Backup Design
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Warning...this is one of those projects that was entered into where at the beginning we decided to virtualize everything slowly as we went, and as you can see, we are still not finished. And the company is pushing everyone to not spend if we do not have to spend.
Right now I have 3 ESXi hosts (2 at our main site and 1 at a remote site, all local storage with 10K SAS and OBR10). All are getting backed up with Veeam. Here's the current layout:
Remote Site
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Veeam backups of ESXi box to onsite Drobo 5N (30-45 day retention)
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File servers backed up with Crashplan Pro for offsite file backup
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No good offsite backup of Veeam backups
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Time Warner 10/10 fiber for internet
Main Site
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Veeam backups of ESXi hosts to Drobo B800i (30 day retention), copied to removable HD and taken offsite (2 week rotation of offsite drives)
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There are also 3 physical servers that are being backed up with an old version of BackupExec (no longer under maintenance) to the same removable hard drives I mention above. The 3 physical machines are the BackupExec server, a file server / DC / web server / print server, and a DC / file server / FTP server.
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We're backing up one of the physical servers mentioned here with Crashplan Pro also.
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Charter 50/50 fiber for internet
So I am looking to change things up a bit and need some advice. I have license to Veeam Enterprise Plus and can do BackupCopy jobs, but I also have those blasted physical boxes.
The servers that are physical are running Server 2003, so it is time for them to go. But, one of them (main file server) I cannot just P2V or rebuild easily. There are so many files entrenched in various places in our company intranet mapped to those file paths, it is truly a Hurculean task to even think about doing. Let's combine that with the fact that I do not have the storage on my 2 ESXi boxes at the main site to absorb the file server mentioned here, and we have a mess.
Option 1
- Beef up storage on the remote site's Drobo and run Veeam BackupCopy jobs from the main site to the remote site. This is a lot of data (probably 100 GB of backups per day) over a slow link.
- Beef up storage on the Drobo B800i. Run Veeam BackupCopy jobs from remote site to main site Drobo for an offsite solution.
- P2V the BackupExec server, continue to use it to backup physical machines at main site, and run backup jobs to a removable HD connected to the ESXi host.
- Push for a new ESXi host / more storage in existing hosts.
Option 2
- Beef up storage on the remote site's Drobo and run Veeam BackupCopy jobs from the main site to the remote site and do not put them on removable HDs at all. This is a lot of data (probably 100 GB of backups per day) over a slow link.
- Beef up storage on the Drobo B800i. Run Veeam BackupCopy jobs from remote site to main site Drobo for an offsite solution.
- Renew BackupExec / look at StorageCraft or Unitrends to backup the physical machines at the image level.
- Push for a new ESXi host / more storage in existing hosts.
My goals are really to make sure the remote site has a better offsite backup and to do what I can to protect this behemoth of a file server that cannot go away yet. I'd love to rid myself of the burden of using the HDs and taking them offsite.
I have one spare HP server GL385 G5 with a MSA70 attached and a bunch of storage that I fear I may be forced to use for any growth, but I do not believe the gear is on the VMWare HCL.
I should also add that RTO is 1-2 hours at the main site, probably closer to 8-24 hrs at the remote site.
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For the 2003 file server, I'd say replace it with a NAS and incorporate its roles into existing servers, or spin up a new VM if you need to. How much storage we talking here?
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Also, you talk about backing up the remote site offsite. How much data we talking here? Syncing the Drobo, or files in general, to the main site over a 10Mb pipe is gonna take forever. What data is there at the remote site that isn't at the main site?
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@ajstringham said:
Also, you talk about backing up the remote site offsite. How much data we talking here? Syncing the Drobo, or files in general, to the main site over a 10Mb pipe is gonna take forever. What data is there at the remote site that isn't at the main site?
Not if He syncs them first then just does incremental.
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I would keep the file server as a windows file server on a VM. I personally don't like a NAS being a file server. They are great backup devices but will bog down with many con-current connections.
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@NetworkNerd said:
I should also add that RTO is 1-2 hours at the main site, probably closer to 8-24 hrs at the remote site.
RTO of 1-2 hours is fairly short. You might need to invest a lot more. Unitrends would help you a lot with this using Windows Instant recovery (which runs on the unitrends appliance itself a copy of the windows machine) or using vmware instant recovery.
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@thecreativeone91 said:
@ajstringham said:
Also, you talk about backing up the remote site offsite. How much data we talking here? Syncing the Drobo, or files in general, to the main site over a 10Mb pipe is gonna take forever. What data is there at the remote site that isn't at the main site?
Not if He syncs them first then just does incremental.
That's why I asked how much data he has. Still, a 10Mb pipe is pretty small. Even running it unthrottled off-hours won't yield much in the way of transfer.
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@NetworkNerd said:
The servers that are physical are running Server 2003, so it is time for them to go. But, one of them (main file server) I cannot just P2V or rebuild easily.
You can't P2V only because you don't have the needed storage on the ESXi hosts.
Do you have an ESXi Essentials package? In otherwords, do you have the ESXi host license? If so, you could (over a long weekend) image the file server to a cheap NAS or other available storage, then rebuild that server as a ESXi host, and restore the image. This gets you into using Veeam to backup that server.
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@ajstringham said:
For the 2003 file server, I'd say replace it with a NAS and incorporate its roles into existing servers, or spin up a new VM if you need to. How much storage we talking here?
It's about 700 GB worth of files on that server.
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@Dashrender said:
@NetworkNerd said:
The servers that are physical are running Server 2003, so it is time for them to go. But, one of them (main file server) I cannot just P2V or rebuild easily.
You can't P2V only because you don't have the needed storage on the ESXi hosts.
Do you have an ESXi Essentials package? In otherwords, do you have the ESXi host license? If so, you could (over a long weekend) image the file server to a cheap NAS or other available storage, then rebuild that server as a ESXi host, and restore the image. This gets you into using Veeam to backup that server.
Yes, we have the Essentials Kit license, but technically we are using all 3 licenses for the 3 hosts I mention here. We'd have to get another Essentials Kit license (cheaper than Essentials Plus). Actually if I am running the storage part from a NAS, I could use RAM and processor from one of my existing hosts.
Keep in mind this is a DC as well. Aren't there bad things that frequently happen to people who P2V DCs?
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@ajstringham said:
@thecreativeone91 said:
@ajstringham said:
Also, you talk about backing up the remote site offsite. How much data we talking here? Syncing the Drobo, or files in general, to the main site over a 10Mb pipe is gonna take forever. What data is there at the remote site that isn't at the main site?
Not if He syncs them first then just does incremental.
That's why I asked how much data he has. Still, a 10Mb pipe is pretty small. Even running it unthrottled off-hours won't yield much in the way of transfer.
I think the WAN Acceleration piece from Veeam will help in this endeavor but am not sure how much.
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@ajstringham said:
Also, you talk about backing up the remote site offsite. How much data we talking here? Syncing the Drobo, or files in general, to the main site over a 10Mb pipe is gonna take forever. What data is there at the remote site that isn't at the main site?
There are at least 4 VMs at the remote site that are not at the main site (file server, DC, Spiceworks server / Veeam Proxy, Engineering software workstation). It's probably 500 GB of data but much less when we talk about the size of the backups themselves.
When you say sync, keep in mind I cannot sync the Drobos as I do not have the right models for that.
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@thecreativeone91 said:
I would keep the file server as a windows file server on a VM. I personally don't like a NAS being a file server. They are great backup devices but will bog down with many con-current connections.
That would be my preference as well.
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Maybe I could use the HP DL 385 G5 I have with the MSA 70 and run something like FreeNAS on it for another datastore option?
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@NetworkNerd said:
Maybe I could use the HP DL 385 G5 I have with the MSA 70 and run something like FreeNAS on it for another datastore option?
That's one option. Something that would be good for, to be honest, would be your StorageCraft server, if you go with that.
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@NetworkNerd said:
Keep in mind this is a DC as well. Aren't there bad things that frequently happen to people who P2V DCs?
Not that I'm aware of. The problem with DCs as VM's is using the snapshot and rolling back. Don't do it unless you're running Server 2012 or newer.
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@ajstringham said:
@NetworkNerd said:
Maybe I could use the HP DL 385 G5 I have with the MSA 70 and run something like FreeNAS on it for another datastore option?
That's one option. Something that would be good for, to be honest, would be your StorageCraft server, if you go with that.
I was thinking use it as a NFS datastore and a place to store the VM files for my current physical machines like was mentioned above. That saves money on a secondary backup solution.
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@NetworkNerd said:
@ajstringham said:
@NetworkNerd said:
Maybe I could use the HP DL 385 G5 I have with the MSA 70 and run something like FreeNAS on it for another datastore option?
That's one option. Something that would be good for, to be honest, would be your StorageCraft server, if you go with that.
I was thinking use it as a NFS datastore and a place to store the VM files for my current physical machines like was mentioned above. That saves money on a secondary backup solution.
Actually, that would be a tertiary backup solution, as you have Veeam and BE already. The original decision seemed to be "buy hardware or buy another backup solution". It seems that utilizing current hardware like that could avoid both?
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@art_of_shred said:
@NetworkNerd said:
@ajstringham said:
@NetworkNerd said:
Maybe I could use the HP DL 385 G5 I have with the MSA 70 and run something like FreeNAS on it for another datastore option?
That's one option. Something that would be good for, to be honest, would be your StorageCraft server, if you go with that.
I was thinking use it as a NFS datastore and a place to store the VM files for my current physical machines like was mentioned above. That saves money on a secondary backup solution.
Actually, that would be a tertiary backup solution, as you have Veeam and BE already. The original decision seemed to be "buy hardware or buy another backup solution". It seems that utilizing current hardware like that could avoid both?
I'd get rid of BackupExec with the P2V of the physical boxes and be able to use Veeam. That eliminates cost of software. But, I cannot avoid some investment in increasing backup storage. So this does not completely eliminate a need for more hardware but does decrease the cost of the hardware needed by a large factor.
