Part 3: VEEAM Backup and Replication v6 setup and config (Configuration steps)

This is part 3 of a 5 series post on VEEAM installation and configuration. In this section, I will show the configuration steps for VEEAM Backup and Replication v6.

Read my other posts on this topic:-
Part 1 (Introduction and Pre-requisites)
Part 2 (VEEAM Installation steps)

Part 4 (VEEAM Backup job creation)

Part 5 (VEEAM Troubleshooting performance issues)

We will basically setup the following components:-

• Add a vCenter Server.
• Configure a VEEAM Backup Repository. 
• Add a VEEAM Backup Proxy Server.
• Remove a VEEAM Backup Proxy Server.
• Configure SNMP settings for email notification.

a. Add a vCenter Server

If you do not have a vCenter Server, you can add your hosts individually. Adding a vCenter Server is preferred, because it makes VEEAM Backup and Replication VMotion-aware.

1. Open the VEEAM Backup and Replication console and on the home page click Add Servers.

2. On the next Window that opens up, click VMware vSphere.

3. On the next screen, enter the hostname or IP address of the vCenter Server.

4. On the next window, type an account with administrator privileges on the vCenter Server.

5. Review the settings and click Finish on the next screen.

b. Configure a VEEAM Backup Repository

1. Create a folder on the drive where you want to backup your VMs. In this example, I've created VEEAM_BACKUP folder on the V: of the VEEAM server itself.

2. On the VEEAM Backup and Replication Home console, under Backup Infrastructure right click the Backup Repository and click Add Backup Repository.

3. On the next window, type a suitable name for your Backup Repository. This is the name by which your Backup Repository will be recognized by VEEAM.

4. In the next window, choose Microsoft Windows Server as a type of Backup Repository.

5. In the next window, select the drive on which you created the backup folder.

6. Browse to the location of the backup folder on the selected drive (that is the folder that we created in step 1 above). In this window, you can also specify the Load control settings. For eg. if you have SATA drives for your storage, you may want to limit the number of concurrent jobs to 2 or 3 to avoid any I/O bottlenecks. Or if you have just one NIC card on the backup server, you can limit the incoming dataflow.

The options in the Advanced tab are self-explanatory.

7. On the next window, you'll see the settings for vPower NFS. vPower NFS enables running virtual machines directly from the backup files. Its a feature thats highly recommended. 

Specify the folder for the vPower NFS cache. As explained earlier, this cache is used to store all the changes to the VM while it is running from the backup files. So depending upon the changes and number of VMs that you will test for Instant Recovery, you might want to leave atleast 50-60 GB space for this folder.

8. Review the settings in the next window and click next. You can import any existing backups to the VEEAM database if you want to in this window.

9. Wait for the repository to be created and configured. Click Finish when done.

c. Add a VEEAM Backup Proxy Server

1. On the VEEAM Backup and Replication Home console, under Backup Infrastructure right click the Backup Proxy and click Add VMware Backup Proxy.

2. In the next window that opens up, click Add New...

3. Enter the hostname or IP address of the VEEAM Backup Proxy Server.

4. On the next window, type an account with administrator privileges on the Backup Proxy Server.

5. The next window will inform you that the "transport" component would be installed on the Backup Proxy Server. Click Next.

6. The VEEAM Backup Proxy Server components will be pushed and installed onto the Proxy server. Wait for the installation to complete and click next.

7. Click Finish to complete the install.

8. After the installation is done, you can modify the settings for Transport Mode. You can also set the SSL Encryption at this screen. 

You can also set the number of maximum concurrent tasks for the Backup Proxy Server. As a rule of thumb, for every 2 CPU cores, VEEAM adds 1 concurrent task. So, for a quad core system, VEEAM would recommend max 2 consurrent tasks. You can, of course, modify these settings.

9. You can set the way Backup Proxy Server accesses the datastores.

10. In the next window, you can specify the settings for Traffic Throttling.

11. Click Finish to complete the installation.

d. Remove a VEEAM Backup Proxy Server

It might sometimes be necessary to remove a VEEAM Backup Proxy Server. For e.g. you decide to change the Backup Proxy Server to some other host, or you decommission the Backup Proxy Server. Follow the steps below to remove a previously configured Backup Proxy Server from your VEEAM farm.

1. To remove a Backup Proxy Server, you would first have to disable it. 
Select Backup Proxy under Backup Infrastructure. On the right hand side right click the Backup Proxy server and select Disable.

2. Once the Proxy has been disabled, right click the Proxy again, select Remove and click Yes.

3. After you have deleted the Proxy, goto the Servers section, right click the Proxy Server that you wanted to remove and click Remove Server.

4. Click Yes on the next window to confirm the removal.

5. Click OK on the next Window.

e. Configure SNMP settings for email notification

1. On the VEEAM home page, click Tools-> Options.

2. In the window that opens up, check the box for "Enable e-mail notification"

3. Enter the following:-

i. Hostname or IP address of the SMTP server.

ii. Your or generic e-mail address.

iii. Recipients e-mail address (multiple recipients should be separated by semicolon)

This completes the Part 3 of the 5 series post on VEEAM installation and configuration. In the next post, I will show how to create backup policies.

Click here to go to Part 4 (VEEAM Backup job creation)