Veeam Backup and Replication with PowerProtect Data Domain

Table of Contents:

• What is Veeam backup and replication
• Why should Veeam customers choose PowerProtect Data Domain storage?
• Architecture Overview
• Industry 3-2-1 backup rule
• Building backups on the first site
• Add an offsite target
• Retire backups to the Cloud
• Restoring backups from Dell PowerProtect Data Domain
• More configurations options
• Veeam Repository Settings
• Job Storage Settings
• Backup Copy Job (BCJ) Settings
• Proxy Server
• VMware version

What is Veeam backup and replication?

Veeam Backup and Replication is a comprehensive data protection and disaster recovery solution. With Veeam Backup and Replication, you can create image-level backups of virtual, physical, and cloud machines and restore from them. Technology used in the product optimizes data transfer and resource consumption, which helps to minimize storage costs and the recovery time in disaster happens.

Veeam Backup and Replication provides a centralized console for administering backup, restore, and replication operations in all supported platforms (virtual, physical, cloud). Also, the console allows you to automate and schedule routine data protection operations and integrate with solutions for alerting and generating compliance reports.

Why should Veeam customers choose PowerProtect Data Domain storage?

• PowerProtect Data Domain Data Invulnerability Architecture ensures that recovery is always possible
• Minimal PowerProtect Data Domain Storage footprint due to superior deduplication
• PowerProtect Data Domain based Cyber Recovery solution protects Veeam backups from Ransomware
• PowerProtect Data Domain integrated directly into Veeam UI
• Supports Application Direct Backups for Databases including NoSQL types
• PowerProtect Data Domain supports up to 1,885 simultaneous backup write streams
• Veeam has integrated DD Boost functionality using included plugin
• High-Performance Backup Repository up to 94 TB/hour with DD Boost
• Less Network traffic and faster backups with DD Boost thanks to data compression
• DD Boost enables Virtual Synthetics and up to 10 times faster backups
• High-Performance mass restore for Disaster Recovery and Cyber Recovery events
• High-Performance Replication for Disaster recovery
• Multi-Protocol Support - CIFS, NFS, DD Boost, VTL, IP, and Fiber Channel
• PowerProtect Data Domain supported as an extent in Veeam Scale Out Backup Repository (SOBR)

Architecture Overview

Customers that want to use Veeam Backup and Replication with PowerProtect Data Domain should consider the following guidelines, if:

• There is a requirement for high performance with Veeam features that create random I/O like Instant VM Recovery, DataLabs, database point in time restore, and others mentioned in Veeam article Performance Impacts of Deduplicated Storage Systems 
• There is a requirement for multiple copies of backups going to long-term backup storage, tape, or cloud
• There is a requirement for fast restores of large VMs that contain multiple virtual hard disks equaling terabytes in size

With the demand placed on backup storage in these scenarios, remember to consider the hardware configuration as it pertains to where backups are stored.

Below are some hardware configuration options that can be used with the Dell storage portfolio to enable the required performance across all scenarios. Sometimes, there is a requirement to combine characteristics of more than one option, but always, it is encouraged that you consult with Dell or a value-added reseller to discuss individual needs.

The industry 3-2-1 backup rule can be used as a guideline for the backup infrastructure planning:

• 3: Maintain at least three copies of your data and applications. That is the one copy you are using and two backups. This way, if one of your backups is unavailable for any reason (such as the backup is co-located with your primary copy and both go down), you can still recover what you need.
• 2: Keep the backup files on two different media types to protect against different types of hazards. Storing your backups on at least two different types of media or storage controller systems provides protection from the vulnerabilities that each type may have.

• 1: Keep one of the backups in a different location. Consider a crisis in your primary data center, such as a fire or power failure. If all copies are collocated, they can all be affected, resulting in unplanned downtime for your organization.

Building backups on the first site with PowerProtect Data Domain

A PowerProtect Data Domain system can be used for storing primary backup copies with Veeam. Datapath enhancements in PowerProtect Data Domain Operating System (DDOS) not only make it a viable target for storing primary copies of VM snapshots but also provides instant VM recovery capabilities.

Add an offsite target

In addition to the above scenario, you can use PowerProtect Data Domain replication to place a second copy offsite for disaster recovery.

Retire backups to the Cloud for long-term retention

Customers can retire their backup to the public or private cloud using PowerProtect Data Domain Cloud tiering. Dell Elastic cloud Storage (ECS), AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud are among the supported Cloud platforms with PowerProtect Data Domain. Retiring backups to the Cloud reclaims space for PowerProtect Data Domain systems on-site. To get a complete list of supported cloud providers, contact Dell.
 

Restoring backups from Dell PowerProtect Data Domain

Veeam (version 9.5, update 4 and upward) has been optimized with PowerProtect Data Domain software (DDOS 6.x) for faster restores. These optimizations have been targeted for Veeam random I/O workloads. Restores can be orchestrated directly from PowerProtect Data Domain (local) or from long-term retention PowerProtect Data Domain systems (offsite or cloud)

More configurations options

The following configurations options are highly recommended when using Veeam with PowerProtect Data Domain. These options can be found when navigating through the Veeam UI to setup backup/restore with PowerProtect Data Domain storage. The options mentioned below assume some familiarity of the reader with configuring Veeam with PowerProtect Data Domain storage. Consult with Dell where seeking clarification on the mentioned options, to help us optimize your data protection solution.

• Veeam Repository Settings:
  • Tasks and Streams - PowerProtect Data Domain storage can support many concurrent streams for backup and restore and these depend on the PowerProtect Data Domain model. There are Veeam defaults for these settings so these must be set explicitly to get maximum concurrency. Use the Limit maximum concurrent tasks setting to set this value.

• Storage compatibility - Do not use Veeam compression and select the option Decompress backup data blocks before storing. Compression is provided by Data Domain DD Boost on the client side and the PowerProtect Data Domain storage on the server side.
• Enable Use per-VM backup files to increase concurrency and performance

• Job Storage Settings:
  • When using CIFS protocol, create Active Fulls every 7 or 14 days. When using DD Boost, create Synthetic Fulls weekly and Active Fulls monthly.

• Clear Perform backup files health check as this is NOT required with PowerProtect Data Domain storage. PowerProtect Data Domain has its own Data Invulnerability Architecture (DIA) that protects against data corruption.

• Disable Veeam deduplication by clearing Enable inline data deduplication
• Set the compression level to None for best performance. If you must choose an option other than None, you can choose Dedupe-friendly.

• Backup Copy Job (BCJ) Settings:
  • Clear Read the entire restore point from source backup instead of synthesizing it from increments to enable PowerProtect Data Domain synthetic backup processing

• Proxy Server:
  • To avoid bottlenecks, the best option is to ensure that each proxy server also functions as a gateway server when writing to a PowerProtect Data Domain backup repository

•  VMware version:
  • Updating VMware to the most current version can positively impact performance. We have found that that customers using VMware version 7.0xxxxxx and above have seen better performance when using Veeam with PowerProtect Data Domain storage.

Find more information about Veeam at:

• Data Domain: Veeam Best Practices Limitations and Recommendations
• Deduplication Appliance Best Practices
• Veeam Backup and Replication User Guide for VMware vSphere