Flexible Engine

Veeam Backup & Replication Server

deployment guide

Objectives

The document has for purpose to

- describe the requirements to setup Veeam Backup & Replication Server on Flexible Engine
- explain how to deploy the product on Flexible Engine

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Content
Objectives................................................................................................................................................................ 1
1. Introduction.................................................................................................................................................... 3
1.1. Licensing & Purchasing .............................................................................................................................. 3
2. VBR image deployment on Flexible Engine .................................................................................................... 4
2.1. Pre-requisites......................................................................................................................................... 4
2.1.1. Veeam Backup & Replication Server Requirements ......................................................................... 4
2.1.2. Backup Repositories .......................................................................................................................... 5
2.1.2.1. Direct attached storage ..................................................................................................................... 5
2.1.2.2. Network attached storage ................................................................................................................ 6
2.1.2.3. Deduplicating storage appliances ..................................................................................................... 6
2.1.2.4. Object storage ................................................................................................................................... 6
2.1.3. Considerations & Limitations* .......................................................................................................... 6
2.1.3.1. Infrastructure ................................................................................................................................ 6
2.1.3.2. Object Storage Repositories ......................................................................................................... 6
2.1.3.3. Backup .......................................................................................................................................... 7
2.1.4. Compute Requirements .................................................................................................................... 7
2.1.4.1. VBR Server Recommendation ....................................................................................................... 7
2.1.5. Backup Repository Sizing................................................................................................................... 9
2.1.6. Permissions on Backup Repository ................................................................................................... 9
2.2. VBR ECS creation ................................................................................................................................. 10
2.3. VBR initial configuration ...................................................................................................................... 13

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1. Introduction
Veeam Backup & Replication Server provides an enterprise backup solution for all your cloud, virtual and
physical workloads by providing backup using hypervisor level snapshot (VMware vsphere, Microsoft Hyper-V,
Nutanix AHV), storage snapshot integration or by protecting the physical servers/VMs/Cloud workloads using
Veeam Agent for Linux & Veeam Agent for Windows so that your data is always protected and accessible.

This guide is intended to provide best practices for deployment of a software-defined data protection solution,
Veeam Backup & Replication can be flexibly deployed at any scale in Flexible Engine environment. It is not
meant as a full documentation or detailed explanation of features. Please refer to Veeam documentation for
complete and up to date information.

1.1. Licensing & Purchasing

Veeam Software offers the following types of licenses for Veeam Backup & Replication:
Paid Licenses
 Subscription license — license that expires at the end of the subscription term. The Subscription license
term is normally 1-3 years from the date of license issue.
 Perpetual license — permanent license. The support and maintenance period included with the license
is specified in months or years. Typically, one year of basic support and maintenance is included with
the Perpetual license.
 Rental license — license with the license expiration date set according to the chosen rental program
(normally 1-12 months from the date of license issue). The Rental license can be automatically updated
upon expiration.
Rental licenses are provided to Veeam Cloud & Service Provides (VCSPs) only. For more information, see
the Rental License section in the Veeam Cloud Connect Guide.

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This Veeam Backup & Replication (VBR) image for Flexible Engine is provided on BYOL basis. To purchase the
license through OCB please use the “Contact Us” button. Please refer to the Veeam website for guidance about
license sizing for your number of ECS to protect.

You will be requested to enter the Veeam license file during the configuration.

The consumption of Flexible Engine resources including ECS for VBR & storage used as a backup repository is
purchased at standard pricing.

2. VBR image deployment on Flexible Engine

2.1. Pre-requisites

2.1.1. Veeam Backup & Replication Server Requirements

Before deploying a Veeam Backup & Replication Server on Flexible Engine, you must define compute
requirements for VBR Server corresponding to your needs.

 Compute Requirements
Recommended Veeam backup server configuration is 1 vCPU and 4 GB RAM per 10 concurrently
running jobs. Concurrent jobs include any running backup or replication jobs as well as any job
with a continuous schedule such as backup copy jobs.

The minimum recommendation is 2 vCPU and 4 GB RAM.

 Disk space

Installation folder
Plan for a minimum of 40 GB. If installing in a virtual machine, thin disks may be used. By default
the installer will choose the drive with most available free space for the pre-configured Default
Backup Repository.

Log files
Log file growth will depend on the number and frequency of jobs and the number of instances
being protected. Consider that the logging level may also affect the log size.

Plan for 3 GB log files generated per 100 protected instances, with a 24 hour RPO. For
environments with more than 500 protected instances it is recommended to change the default
location to a different fast access disk. Many concurrently running jobs may produce a lot of write
streams to log files, that can slow down operations for the Veeam Backup Service and Backup
Manager processes.

 Veeam Backup Catalog folder

This folder is used if guest indexing in backup jobs is enabled.

Plan for 10 GB per 100 ECS for guest file system catalog folder (persistent data).

 Veeam Backup & Replication Database

Veeam Backup & Replication stores all information about backup infrastructure, jobs settings, job
history, sessions and other configuration data in a Microsoft SQL Server database. When planning
the Veeam Backup & Replication deployment you must choose the placement of the

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 configuration database. It may be either a local or remote SQL Server with several licensing
options available. Microsoft SQL Server 2016 Express Edition is included in the Veeam Backup &
Replication setup which is a convenient option for most smaller deployments :

 Each instance uses only up to 1 GB of RAM

 Each instance uses only up to 4 cores of the first CPU
 Database size cannot exceed 10 GB

It is recommended to install Standard or Enterprise Edition if any of the following apply:

 When protecting more than 500 VMs.

 When unable to configure an external staging server.
 When databases are using advanced features of Microsoft SQL Server.
 When using Files to Tape jobs extensively.

Please follow these guidelines* for SQL Server :

Number of concurrently CPU RAM

running jobs
Up to 25 2 4 GB
Up to 50 4 8 GB
Up to 100 8 16 GB

*Please refer to Veeam Documentation for complete and up to date information.

2.1.2. Backup Repositories

A backup repository is a storage location where Veeam keeps backup files, Agent based backups, VM copies
and metadata for replicated VMs.
To configure a backup repository, you can use the following storage types however all repository types are
not configurable in Public cloud environment:

2.1.2.1. Direct attached storage

You can add virtual and physical servers as backup repositories:
o Microsoft Windows server
You can use a Microsoft Windows server with local or directly attached storage as a backup
repository. The storage can be a local disk, directly attached disk-based storage (such as a
USB hard drive), or iSCSI/FC SAN LUN in case the server is connected into the SAN fabric.
o Linux server
You can add Linux server with local, directly attached storage or mounted NFS as a backup
repository. The storage can be a local disk, directly attached disk-based storage (such as a

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 USB hard drive), NFS share, or iSCSI/FC SAN LUN in case the server is connected into the SAN
fabric.

2.1.2.2. Network attached storage

You can add the following network shares as backup repositories:
o CIFS (SMB) share
o NFS share

2.1.2.3. Deduplicating storage appliances

You can add the following deduplicating storage appliances as backup repositories:
o Dell EMC Data Domain
o ExaGrid
o HPE StoreOnce
o Quantum DXi

2.1.2.4. Object storage

You can use cloud storage services as backup repositories. Object storage repositories can be used in
the following ways:
In Scale-Out Backup Repository as a part of Capacity Tier. Capacity tier of scale-out backup repository
allows to offload existing backup data directly to cloud-based object storage by using on-premises S3
Compatible devices like Flexible Engine. For more information, see Capacity Tier.
For details, see Object Storage Repository.

2.1.3. Considerations & Limitations*

Please refer to Veeam Documentation for complete and up to date information.

2.1.3.1. Infrastructure

For infrastructure components like ECS, EVS Volume, Network etc. the Flexible Engine limitations apply.

2.1.3.2. Object Storage Repositories

 Make sure to open required ports to communicate with object storage repositories in advance, as
described in Used Ports.
 Make sure the S3 Compatible device you are adding supports AWS v4 signature. For more information
about authentication requests, see this Amazon article.
 Data in object storage bucket/container must be managed solely by Veeam Backup & Replication,
including retention and data management. Enabling lifecycle rules is not supported, and may result in
backup and restore failures.
 If a backup chain contains backup files that are marked as corrupted by Health Check, then such
corrupted files, as well as all subsequent files that go after the corrupted one are never offloaded. In

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 such a scenario, offload is only possible starting from the full backup file that succeeds the backup chain
with corrupted backups.
 Different object storage repositories mapped to the same cloud folder can be used for storing both the
Capacity Tier backups and the NAS backups.
Important!
The same object storage repository (mapped to the same cloud folder) must not be used across multiple
Veeam Backup & Replication servers for the same purposes as it leads to unpredictable system behavior and
inevitable data loss.
For the same reason, two object storage repositories mapped to the same cloud folder must not be added to
different scale-out backup repositories within one Veeam Backup & Replication server.

2.1.3.3. Backup

Since on Public cloud you don’t have access to hypervisor so to backup workloads like ECS, you need deploy
Veeam agent for Linux & Veeam Agent for Windows.

2.1.4. Compute Requirements

2.1.4.1. VBR Server Recommendation

Specification Requirement
Hardware CPU: x86-64 processor (4 cores recommended).
Memory: 4 GB RAM plus 500 MB RAM for each concurrent job. Memory consumption
varies according to number of VMs in the job, size of VM metadata, size of production
infrastructure, etc.
1
Disk Space: 5 GB for product installation and 4.5 GB for Microsoft .NET Framework 4.7.2
installation. 10 GB per 100 VM for guest file system catalog folder (persistent data).
Network: 1 Gbps or faster for on-site backup and replication, and 1 Mbps or faster for
offsite backup and replication. High latency and reasonably unstable WAN links are
supported.
1
Here and throughout this document GB is considered as 2^30 bytes, TB as 2^40 bytes.
OS Only 64-bit version of the following operating systems are supported:
 Microsoft Windows Server 2019
 Microsoft Windows Server 2016
 Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2
 Microsoft Windows Server 2012
 Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1
Software During setup, the system configuration check is performed to determine if all prerequisite
software is available on the machine where you plan to install Veeam Backup & Replication.
If some of the required software components are missing, the setup wizard will offer you to
install missing software automatically. This refers to:
 Microsoft .NET Framework 4.7.2

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  Microsoft Windows Installer 4.5
 Microsoft SQL Server Management Objects
 Microsoft SQL Server System CLR Types
 Microsoft Report Viewer Redistributable 2015
 Microsoft Universal C Runtime
The following software must be installed manually:
 Microsoft PowerShell 2.0.
 Firefox, Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, or Microsoft Internet Explorer 10.0 or later.
 RDP client version 7.0 or later installed on the backup server (required to open the
VM console during SureBackup recovery verification of Microsoft Hyper-V VMs). The
RDP client is pre-installed on Microsoft Windows 7/Windows Server 2008 R2 OS or
later. You can download the RDP client from this Microsoft KB article.
[Optional] To add SCVMM servers to Veeam Backup & Replication infrastructure, the
following software is required:
 Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2019
 Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 1807
 Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 1801
 System Center 2016 Virtual Machine Manager Admin UI (for connecting SCVMM
2016 servers)
 System Center 2012 R2 Virtual Machine Manager Admin UI (for connecting SCVMM
2012 R2 servers)
 System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager Admin UI (for connecting SCVMM
2012 servers)
The version of SCVMM Admin UI installed on the backup server must match the SCVMM
server version. Make sure that versions of updates also match.
If you plan to install Veeam Backup & Replication in the unattended mode using the
command line interface, manually install all prerequisite software before that. For more
information, see Installing Veeam Backup & Replication in Unattended Mode.
SQL Database Local or remote installation of the following versions of Microsoft SQL Server:
 Microsoft SQL Server 2019
 Microsoft SQL Server 2017
 Microsoft SQL Server 2016 (Microsoft SQL Server 2016 SP2 Express Edition is included
1
in the setup)
 Microsoft SQL Server 2014
 Microsoft SQL Server 2012 (Microsoft SQL Server 2012 SP4 Express Edition is included
2
in the setup)
 Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2
 Microsoft SQL Server 2008
All editions of Microsoft SQL Server are supported. The usage of Microsoft SQL Server
Express Edition is limited by the database size up to 10 GB. If you plan to have larger
databases, use other editions of Microsoft SQL Server.
Veeam Backup & Replication and Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager configuration
databases can be deployed in Microsoft SQL AlwaysOn Availability Groups. For more
information, see this Veeam KB article.
1
For machines running Microsoft Windows Server 2012 or later.

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 * Please refer to Veeam Documentation for complete and up to date information.

2.1.5. Backup Repository Sizing

The sizing for the disk repositories differs based on the stored data & its retention (how long you want to keep
the data). The sizing calculator can you help you size the repository correctly.

2.1.6. Permissions on Backup Repository

To be able to store backups on a backup repository managed by a Veeam backup server, the user must have
access permissions on this backup repository.

Access permissions are granted to security principals such as users and AD groups by the backup administrator
working with Veeam Backup & Replication. Users with granted access permissions can target Veeam Agent
backup jobs at this backup repository and perform restore from backups located on this backup repository.

If the Veeam Backup Jobs are created from Veeam Backup & Replication Server instead of Agent then you do
not need to grant access permissions on the backup repository to users.

After you create a new backup repository, access permissions on this repository are set to Deny to everyone.
To allow users to store backups on the backup repository, you must grant users with access permissions to this
repository.

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2.2. VBR ECS creation
Select the Veeam Backup & Replication Server image using Elastic Cloud Server console as follows :

1. Log in to your Flexible Engine account

2. Select the Elastic Cloud Server in Computing services

3. Then click Create ECS

4. Select any flavor starting with minimum 2vCPU and 4GB RAM

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5. To select the image, click on Public Image and filter through Other field to choose Veeam Backup &
Replication Server

Select required VPC based on tenants to backup & Security Group for inbound/outbound rules :

Provide ECS name as desired and choose key pair to generate secure password for login :

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And you are done :

Once you login, you will see an icon for VBR (Veeam Backup & Replication) console on the
desktop to launch Veeam. Just click on connect to use Windows session authentication :

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2.3. VBR initial configuration

Initially the VBR server will be deployed with a Default Repository as below on C:\Backups, it is always
recommended to use a separate Drive other than system drive to create the backup repository. You can
achieve this by attaching another Disk (EVS) to your ECS :

Refer to section 2.1.2 for type of Repositories:

Click on Create Disk in case of a new EVS volume or click on View Disk to attach an existing EVS volume.

Go to EVS and attach :

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Once the disk is attached, make it present as a Drive on your VBR server to be configured as a repository on
Veeam Backup & Replication server :

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Veeam recommends using ReFS filesystem (64K Block) for local drives as repository :

Creating a new local backup repository and using it as an extent for Scale Out Backup Repository with S3 bucket
from Flexible Engine :

Click on BACKUP INFRASTRUCTURE -> Backup Repositories -> right click and Add backup repository…

Click on Direct Attached Storage -> Microsoft Windows as the option since it is the local attached Drive on the
ECS :

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Click on Next and by default the repository server here is your VBR server, alternatively for bigger
environments you can offload the process & compute requirements to a separate windows ECS as well. Now
click on Populate and it will show up all local drives, select the newly created Drive (E:\ in my case) :

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Below are the screenshots to help you add your S3 Object Storage as Scale Out Backup Repository in capacity
tier.

Right click on Scale-out Repositories and click on Add scale-out backup repository…

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Give a suitable Name to your Scale-out Backup Repository (SoBR) and click on next :

Since direct writing to S3 Object Storage is yet not supported with Veeam hence it needs a tier to be defined,
we will be using local repository as performance tier and stage backups to S3 for larger retention at lower cost.
Select the newly created Repository “Backup Repository 1” :

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Under Advanced Options :

Now click on Next and Select Data Locality to keep the backup chains together “ Full + Incrementals”

Click on Next and Click on Add to add the extent of S3 Object Storage to Scale Out Backup Repository as next
Tier :

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Choose S3 Compatible as the option to integrate S3 Object Storage from Flexible Engine and before that make
sure you have your S3 Access Key, Secret Access Key and region details ready, you can put Service Point as this
oss.prod-cloud-ocb.orange-business.com and create a bucket under S3 where you would like to store backups
to :

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Give a suitable name to your Object Storage Repository :

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Click on Add to add the Access Key & Secret Access Key for S3 Object Storage and click on Next to Authenticate:

Now you will see the buckets created under the S3 account you are using and create a new folder under which
you want to store backups by clicking on Browse.

You can also limit S3 Object Storage consumption using the checkbox highlighted below.

Making backups immutable is yet not supported by Flexible Engine S3 :

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Now your Scale-out Backup Repository (SoBR) is ready to be used :

You can now specify this Scale-out Object Repository in Backup job and let Veeam manage the staging of data
from local disk to S3 bucket using the policy you specified during SoBR creation:

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