Following 3-2-1-0 with the Veeam Agents

3-2-1-0: 3 copies of the data, 2 independent media, 1 offsite and 0 errors on recovery.  It’s common sense, it doesn’t even need to be said.  Veeam has introduced some new and powerful Agents to cover the workloads that sit where Veeam Backup and Replication cannot reach.  The thing is that although you can send the agent data to a cloud connect to service provider, by themselves, it is tricky to have the agents cover all of 3-2-1-0.

Below are a few different options available today, outlining how the 3-2-1-0 requirement can be met for the agent workload.

Veeam Agents

• Configure the agents to backup directly to the offsite location

Veeam Agents with extra work

• Configure the agents to do a local backup (probably to a SAN or NAS, so that local restores are easy)
• Summary of extra work required:
  1. Write a post-job script to copy the backup files to a second, offsite location
     1. It might be good to copy the full chain of backup files, not just a single increment
     2. The old-school destination of choice would be tape, but since manual tape manipulation is so 20^th century, I’d suggest a USB hard drive or even cloud storage

• The script will need to clean up unneeded restore points to enable space reuse.

1. Figure out the offsite rotation, and how to remove unneeded data safely
2. Figure out recovery plans for the secondary copy data
   1. You will need to import the backup into the agent.
   2. Consider data egress costs if using cloud storage

Veeam Agents with Veeam Backup Free

• Install Veeam Backup Free
  1. Install the Veeam Agent license into Veeam Backup Free
  2. Create a primary repository with Veeam Backup Free (probably to a SAN or NAS, so that local restores are easy)
  3. Add the offsite location into Veeam Backup Free
• Configure the agents to write data into the primary repository
• Configure Veeam Backup Free to create secondary copies in the offsite location

 

Veeam Agents with Veeam Backup and Replication (VBR)

• Install Veeam Backup and Replication
  1. If there are no virtual hosts in the environment, install this on a physical Windows 2016 Server, with the Hyper-V 2016 role deployed on it. License the appropriate number of sockets for this system.  This will allow you to do instant VM recoveries to this Hyper-V host.
  2. Create a primary repository with VBR (Probably to a SAN or NAS, so that local restores are easy)
  3. Add the offsite location into VBR
  4. Configure addition VBR roles (Tape server, WAN accelerators…)
• Configure the agents to write data into the primary repository
• Configure VBR to create secondary copies in the offsite location

 

Conclusion

Using the Veeam agents in combination with Veeam Backup and Replication provides a complete solution and allows you to follow the 3-2-1-0 rule with ease, and introduces some nice to have features that can reduce bandwidth requirements and help with storage.