Veeam and NFS

[tractng]

Hello,

Trying to get some more understanding of the architecture.  I did some reading on the Veeam site but still a little vague.  I have used NFS years ago with a linux machine attached to the share.

Scope:  Our Veeam 6.5 machine is a Windows 2008 R2 (virtual machine).  What I want to do is use NFS as a storage for our backup data.   Can I just mount the NFS share on the VMware host instead and add a second drive to the virtual machine? 

On the Veeam's configuration, it has these options below.  Just trying to learn more about the setup.

•Microsoft Windows server with local or directly attached storage. In this case, Veeam Backup & Replication will deploy the Veeam transport service on the Windows server connected to the storage system. The transport service is responsible for data processing tasks, enabling efficient backups over slow connections. This type of a backup repository can also act as the vPower NFS server (for this, remember to select corresponding settings at the next steps of the wizard). For more information, see Veeam vPower NFS Service.

•Linux server with local, directly attached or mounted NFS storage. In this case, Veeam Backup & Replication will deploy the Veeam transport service on the Linux server connected to the storage system. The transport service is responsible for data processing tasks, enabling efficient backups over slow connections

Thanks,

TT

[ch1ta]

What I want to do is use NFS as a storage for our backup data.  

From my perspective, the easiest way you have is to connect an existing NFS to Linux machine, and later choose it as a backup repository (scenario #2).

Should work like charm.

[tractng]

Thanks for the feedback.  I think so too.

[rick-vanover]

Hi Tractng and all, I hope this message finds you well.

When putting Veeam backups on an NFS share, here's how it works:

Veeam is a Windows Server, NFS directly has (historically) been a little rough with Windows. (Windows Server 2012 does it much better but not yet supported directly)

To get to an NFS share, we add a Linux system (Can be a VM) to the inventory of Veeam.

This puts an agent in that Linux system to interact with Veeam and directly access the NFS share as a mount  (Add your nfs mount command as a startup)

Then you can define a repository as a path on the Linux system in Veeam

Then backups can go there.

Is it a Deduplication appliance? If so, not all of them support NFS flock, a distributed locking protocol (Data Domain in particular). So, be mindful of the mount command.

Here is a Word document with a few screenshots of the Veeam configuration and the NFS mount script: 

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/19688889/_DeleteQueue/On%20Linux%20system%20mount%20NFS%20share.docx

One little known benefit to using NFS... If Active Directory is failed and it's backups are on a CIFS share... How do you authenticate :smileywink:

[rick-vanover]

Oh, and if the Linux system is a VM, I recommend SLES for VMware. Further, provision it equal to that of a proxy, if you have multiple proxies, then make the Linux VM 4 cores and 4 GB RAM and "SEE HOW IT GOES"

[tractng]

Thanks guys.  Not sure if we will tap into our Hitachi (BlueArc) SAN unit since since space is very tight.  We have a few Dell 2950 servers that were once used as ESXi hosts.  Maybe just format them and install Linux and used it as repository.