Veeam Backup and Recovery
Veeam Backup and Replication is a Windows-based distributed data protection solution. While Veeam has evolved the capability to protect a wide variety of resources, it was originally designed to back up VMs running on ESX using snapshots. It is one of the most mature solutions in this respect.
There are three supported approaches relevant to this use case:
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Cloud repository proxy as primary backup target - Using an AWS Storage Gateway appliance (either hardware or virtual) acting as a Virtual Tape Library (VTL). This is the only method that supports S3 Glacier.
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Cloud repository as archive tier - This method uses a Veeam Object Repository as well, but backup jobs do not directly stream to it. Instead, a disk repository is used as the primary backup target. Data is then migrated over time to Amazon S3 according to criteria specified in Veeam archive policies.
Logical architecture
Illustrated workflows
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Backup of VMs in Site 1 to Amazon S3 via AWS Storage Gateway in VTL mode using HotAdd transport
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Backup of VMs in Site 1 to Amazon S3 via Object Repository using HotAdd transport
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Backup of VMs in Site 2 to Amazon S3 via Object Repository on cloud-based Backup Server using NBD transport
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Recovery of Site 1 VMs that were backed up via Object Repository from Amazon S3 to Site 2 via NBD transport mode
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Recovery of Site 1 VMs that were backed up via Object Repository from Amazon S3 to Amazon EC2 on cloud-based Backup Server using Direct Restore to Amazon EC2 feature in Veeam Backup and Replication 9.5 u4a
Veeam Backup and Replication 9.5 u4a (and later) feature support
| VADP Backup Features | Supported | S3 Features | Commercial Support | GovCloud Support |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Application Consistency | Yes1 | Amazon S3 Standard | Yes | Yes |
| Volume Consistency | Yes2 | Amazon S3 Standard-IA | Yes | Yes |
| Source Side Compression | Yes3 | Amazon S3 One Zone-IA | No | No |
| Source Side Deduplication | Yes3 | Amazon S3 Intelligent-Tiering | Yes4 | Yes4 |
| Global Deduplication | No | S3 Glacier | Yes4 | Yes4 |
| Changed Block Tracking | Yes | S3 Glacier Deep Archive | Yes4 | Yes4 |
| Single File Restore | Yes | Amazon S3 Cross-Region Replication | No | No |
1 For registered VSS Writers in Windows Guests running VMware Tools
2 For Windows Guests running VMware Tools
3 Source-side in this context refers to the HotAdd Backup Proxy appliance, not the vSphere hosts
4 Supported when using AWS Storage Gateway as a Cloud Repository Proxy only
Further information
For additional information, refer to:
