Veeam “It Just Works!”, but let’s make it work better
I know everyone out there has heard Veeam’s tag line “It Just Works!” (they even patented the phrase), how can anyone disagree with that statement. Install Veeam Backup and Replication using all of the defaults, including Microsoft SQL Server Express and you can backup your virtual environment pretty easily. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t look at the overall design and make a few changes to make Veeam “Work Better”.
My original Veeam server installation was comprised of Microsoft Windows Server 2008 (not R2), Microsoft SQL Server Express 2005 and I used all the defaults during the Veeam install. I configured all of the services and components to run locally on the Veeam Server (SQL, Proxy, Enterprise Manager). My Veeam backups ran great and every time I had to restore or turn on a replica, it just worked. But after several version upgrades and changes within the software, it was time for me to start fresh and fix the common misconfigurations and start using Microsoft Windows Server 2012 with it’s compression and deduplication advantages.
I am now in the process of a new installation of Veeam B&R 8 on a virtual Windows Server 2012 R2, I used Michael White’s blog post “How to build a Windows 2012 R2 VMware template”. After building the template I deployed a new VM with 4 vCpu cores, 8 GB RAM, and 60 GB HDD. I installed Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Standard and Veeam Backup and Replication 8. I opened Veeam and added vCenter as a Managed Server so Veeam has access to your virtual environment. Using Microsoft’s iSCSI Initiator, I connected an non production Dell Equalogic to the Veeam server and added it to the Repository. Now my Veeam server is ready to backup the virtual environment, it will work ok, but with a few tweaks your performance will increase dramatically.
- Make sure that your enable “Parallel Processing” – your Proxy server will need 1 vCpu core per concurrent task
- Add a Proxy Server (or multiple) to take the load off of the Veeam Server, the proxy server moves the data
- The folks at Veeam make it very easy to install additional Proxies
- You can use an underutilized VM in your environment
- Adding a Proxy Server almost doubled the speed of my backup
- Use a full version of Microsoft SQL Server and not the Express version – The Express version can use only 1 vCpu core, even if you have 4 vCpu cores on the VM (this is a Microsoft limitation)
These are not the only improvements you can make, but hopefully it will help someone who typically just uses the defaults.
Clint Wyckoff - February 25, 2015, 2:35 am
Great write up Jaison!