Veeam Replication to DR site – Part 2: Configuration

Veeam, VMware

Part 2

In part 1 I gave a brief overview of the requirements and design, now I’ll go through Veeam configuration.

Veeam Configuration

The first step to be tackled was to add the Production cluster (PRD-CLUSTER), DR host (DR-HOST) and both proxies (PRD-VPXY1 & DR-VPXY1) to the Backup Infrastructure within Veeam. While the DR host is only a single VMware vSphere 5.0 host, it is managed by a vCenter server, DR-VC1, this also had to be added to.

This is another point made in the Veeam best practises

  • Veeam Backup server should have access to vCenter server, ESX(i) hosts, and both source and target backup proxies.

  • Source backup proxy should have access to the Veeam Backup server,source host, target proxy, and source vCenter server.

  • Target proxy should have access to the Veeam Backup server, source proxy, target host,and target vCenter server.

The network team had to get involved at this stage to allow VLAN A and VLAN B (Management VLAN) to communicate with one another, as they were on separate subnets. The same applied to VLAN C and VLAN D, replication VLANs, different subnets.

Taking each point in turn :- (From the diagram)

Veeam_Replication_network_overview_2

 

  • PRD-BKUP1 had to be able to communicate with DR-PRXY1 on the management address on VLAN B from VLAN A.
  • PRD-PRXY1 had to be able to communicate with PRD-BKUP1, PRD-CLUSTER on the management address on VLAN A, but the communication between PRD-PRXY1 and DR-PRXY1 would have to be via they replication network/VLAN. This was achieved by using entries in the local host file on the proxy servers.
  • DR-PRXY1 had to be able to communicate with PRD-BKUP1 on management address on VLAN A from VLANB, and to DR-HOST on VLAN B.  Again the communication to PRD-PRXY1 had to be via the replication network/VLAN.

 

Adding Proxies

 

1. From the Veeam console click on Backup Infrastructure

Add-proxy1

2. Select Backup Proxies

Add-proxy2

 

3. Right click and select Add VMware Backup Proxy 

Add-proxy3

 

4. Select Add New (if server hasn’t been added already)

Add-proxy4

5. Enter the DNS name or IP address  of the proxy server.

Add-proxy5

 

6. On the next screen enter username and password , either local admin account or domain account with local privileges.

Add-proxy6

 

7. Click  Next at review screen

Add-proxy7

 

8. Veeam will now install the Veeam Transport onto the destination proxy. click Next when completed.

Add-proxy8

 

9.  Click Finish on the summary screen.

Add-proxy9

 

10. As the proxies didn’t have direct access to the storage, the transport mode had to be specified as Network.

Add-proxy10

 

Add-proxy11

 

11. Throttling was left unconfigured, but can be set to restrict

Add-proxy12

 

12. Finally click on Finish to complete the proxy installation.

Add-proxy13

 

 

If adding the proxies by DNS name, then it goes without saying that you should ensure the name successfully resolves either through a domain DNS server or local hosts file.

In the final part I’ll go through the setup of the replication job and some errors encountered along the way.