Veeam Agents managed by Veeam Backup and Replication

Introduction

As a general rule: Veeam Backup Agent Free edition is NOT supported, because the free edition does not support cloud repositories.

Managed Veeam Agents (managed by a VBR installation) or stand-alone Veeam Agents for Servers or Workstations  with an already existing valid license are supported. This article guides you through how to set up your cloud backups if you use Managed Veeam Agents.

Pre-requisites

- You have a Veeam Backup and Replication installation running. Supported versions: check here, under Plugins > Infrastructure

- You configured the service provider in the VBR console

- You have a valid license

- Supported OS versions: check here, under Management Agents

Managed Veeam Agents

Managed Veeam Agents are Backup agents that were deployed and are managed from a Veeam Backup and Replication console. E.g. a certain infrastructure consists of Hyper-V hosts, virtual machines and physical servers / clients. Physical machines can only be backed up by Veeam Agents. These agents have been deployed using VBR which also takes care of the backup of the virtualized infrastructure. 

Job types

There are two ways to configure cloud backups. You can define:

• • • a cloud job, sending backup data of the VM to the cloud,

or

• • • a cloud copy job, making use of the data of an already existing local job.

How to choose?

Mostly, you'll use cloud copy jobs, but there are cases where you will rather go with stand-alone cloud jobs.

All machines of the protection group are included in one job	Do you want a cloud backup of all machines of the job?	Job type
YES	YES	Cloud copy - based on the one local job
YES	NO	Cloud job - of the VM(s) you want to backup to the cloud
NO	YES	Cloud copy - based on each of the local job(s) of the machine(s) you want to backup to the cloud
NO	NO	Cloud copy - based on each of the local job(s) of the machine(s) you want to backup to the cloud

Configure a cloud job

To configure a backup job of a stand-alone machine from VBR, go to the Home section and choose Backup Job. Here you can choose the type of backup you’d like to create. Choose Windows computer...

Give the job a name, it can be anything, but it’s practical to choose something meaningful e.g. the name of the machine you’ll backup.

To choose the machine(s) you want to backup, click on Add and browse the machines of the already defined protection group or add them individually one by one. Click on Add again, then on Next to go on with the wizard.

Choose the backup Mode

Choose the Cloud Repository that was automatically created when you added the service provider.

If you click the Advanced button, you can choose special settings, e.g. if you want to create incremental or reverse incremental backups, or how often you want to create an active full backup. More about this can be read in the Veeam knowledgebase. https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backup/vsphere/backup_methods.html?ver=100

Our recommendation is that if you specify less than 15 restore points, create synthetic full backups periodically to shorten the restore times (in case you need one). If you need to specify more than 15 restore points, there's a chance full backups will fill up your repository, so it's more advisable to go with forever forward incrementals. (More about the different job types here.)

Caution: The reverse incremental backup method is not recommended for backup jobs targeted at the cloud repository. The process of a full backup file rebuild requires higher I/O load. This may impact the backup job performance, especially in case of low bandwidth or high latency network connection between the tenant side and SP side. 

Choose the method appropriate to your scenario.

To use synthetic full backups: Click Advanced > Backup tab > Create synthetic full backups periodically > Choose the days

To go with the Forever forward incrementals method, simply remove the tick from Create synthetic full backups periodically.

On the Maintenance tab, tick in Perform backup files health check - this will help in preventing the backup files to be corrupted.

On the Storage tab, you can choose the compression level. The higher the compression level, the greater load is on the source computer's CPUs BUT the backup sizes become smaller. Choose the one appropriate to your scenario. We recommend using the Extreme settings unless your machine is short on CPU power AND you run your backups during the day.

Under storage optimization, choose the  WAN storage, because the cloud repository target is accessed through the WAN.

Enable encryption (recommended) if it is required by your security policy. 

Caution: store the password securely because it will be needed in case of a restore. If you lose it, we cannot recover it.

Click Apply when all the required configurations are done.

On the Guest Processing tab, you can specify if you need Veeam to manage the applications and data inside the virtual machine, e.g. index the file system or truncate SQL logs. More on this here: https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backup/vsphere/guest_processing.html?ver=100

For a server running a SQL / Oracle database, Microsoft ActiveDirectory, Exchange or Sharepoint, you can truncate logs by enabling application-aware processing. This is the default setting for this scenario, but use it with caution.

Caution: use this option carefully. Using both Veeam SQL backup and native SQL backups will render both of those backups useless! More on SQL backups here. Let us know if you need help in this, we are happy to assist.

On the next tab, you can choose a schedule for automatic processing, if you want your backup to run periodically.

If you need to use a backup window i.e. the backups can run during specific times e.g. only at night, tick in Terminate the job if it exceeds allowed backup window. Note that a job terminated by the backup window will be considered failed, and the restore point won't be usable. As an alternate option to spare resources, use Network Throttling.

Click on Window...

Mark the times when you don't want the job to run. If the small squares are grayed out, it means the job won't run during those times.

Click OK

Click Next.

On the Summary tab, review your configuration and click Finish to finalize the backup job settings. Optionally, you may tick in the “Run this job when I click Finish”, and the job will start right away.

Create a backup copy job

Backup copy jobs use the data of an already existing local backup file, basically the local backup data of a computer is copied into the cloud repository. Consequently, to use this method, you need an already existing local job configured in the VBR console.

To configure a backup copy, do the following. 

Go to Home > Backup Copy > Windows computer backup…

Give the job a name, and choose the mode. Immediate to copy all local restore points to the cloud (whenever a new restore point appears, the backup copy will also run), Periodic copy if you want to copy only the latest restore point.

As an object, choose the already existing backup job to start from.

Choose the cloud repository. The cloud repository was automatically added when you configured the service provider.

Click the Advanced button to set some extra configuration.

On the Maintenance, tab tick in Perform backup files health check - this will help in preventing the backup files to be corrupted.

On the Storage tab, you can choose the compression level. The higher the compression level, the greater load is on the source computer's CPUs BUT the backup sizes become smaller. Choose the one appropriate to your scenario (help here) - or if you're unsure, leave it on Auto to let Veeam decide.

Enable encryption (recommended), if it is required by your security policy. 

Caution: store the password securely because it will be needed in case of a restore. If you lose it, we cannot recover it.

Click Apply when all the required configurations are done.

On the Schedule tab, you can choose Continuously so that the job is waiting for any changes in the “mother” backup job. In this case, the cloud copy might run into your users normal working hours. If you experience that the backup hinders performance, choose a backup window.

Click Apply > Finish