Build Your VBR v10 Environment: Basic Customer Tenant

In this post we are going to continue on our journey of building your own, full featured, Veeam Backup and Replication v10 environment. As a reminder of how this series is going here’s the list:

• Episode 1: Intro and Common components
• Episode 2: On-Prem Windows Components (VBR, Windows Proxy, Windows Repo)
• Episode 3: On-Prem Linux Components (Proxy, Repo), Create Local Jobs
• Episode 4: Build Service Provider pod
• Episode 5: Create cloud jobs to both Service Provider and Copy Mode to S3
• Episode 6: Veeam Availability Console
• Episode 7: Veeam Backup for Office 365

In this installment we are going to focus on building out the Microsoft Windows side of your customer environment, the one that is deployed on-premises to the customer data. We will begin by deploying a Veeam Backup and Replication server followed by setting up a Window Proxy server and a Repository based on ReFS.

Prerequisites

• Go to my.veeam.com and download the v10 GA ISO file and an updated v10 license file.

Installation Steps

1. Mount VeeamBackup and Replication v10 ISO
2. Run setup.exe
3. If earlier than 2019 you will need to install .Net Framework 4.7.2 and reboot before proceeding with the actual installation. You can proactively do this with choco install dotnet4.7.2
4. Supply correct v10 license file or hit yes to automatically upgrade previous version license file
5. Under Program Features deselect any unneeded features (uncommon)
6. Install prerequisite packages as needed
7. Choose default configuration (Install) or advanced (Let me specify different settings)
   1. Default will use common port numbers and folders and install SQL Server Express 2016
   2. Checking the box allows you to change port numbers and folder locations, specify a different SQL server
8. Specify the Service Account to run Veeam as. The default System account will work just fine if either you are using the local SQL Express installation or if you are using SQL authentication. More common is to create a user that is a local administrator on the Veeam Server and that has rights to the SQL server or even just the database if you precreate it.
9. Configure your remote SQL server connection if desired and modify the database name if needed.
10. Hit Install and then finish

Configuring Veeam Backup and Replication Components

1. Launch Veeam Console
2. Go to Menu> Manage Credentials
3. Add a standard account, choosing credentials that have administrator level rights to the managed servers you need. It is common to provide something here with Domain Admin rights as you can then use it for application-aware processing as well.
4. Go to Backup Infrastructure
5. Right Click Managed Servers, choose Add Managed Server
6. Specify name of proxy server, hit Next
7. Specify created credentials, hit Next
8. Hit Apply to have the Transport service installed on the remote server
9. Repeat steps 5-8 for an additional scaled out managed servers you have
10. Prepare your storage repository disks
    1. Bring Online
    2. Initialize
    3. Format with ReFS with 64k blocks or NTFS with 64k block, /L modifier for large blocks
11. Go to Backup Infrastructure, Backup Proxies
    1. Right click, choose Add Vmware Backup Proxy Server
    2. Choose the proper managed server
    3. (Optional) Select certain Transport modes:
    4. (Optional) Select which production datastores you want this proxy to work with
    5. Set the maximum concurrent tasks (.vmdk, .vhdx files) this proxy can handle. This is tied directly to the number of cores available to the proxy server
    6. Modify Network Traffic Rules as needed
    7. Finish
    8. Remove default Proxy Servers
12. Go to Backup Infrastructure, Backup Repositories
    1. Right click, choose add Backup Repository
    2. Choose Direct Attached Storage for a Windows Server
    3. Give it a Name, hit Next
    4. Choose the server and Populate, select right volume and hit Next
    5. Manage concurrent tasks and/or data rate as needed
    6. Under Advanced select as applicable. I tend to choose Align backup data blocks and User per-VM backup files as performance increase methods but make sure these fit your needs
    7. Hit Next
    8. Enable vPowerNFS for Instant Recover and SureBackup
    9. Hit Apply
13. Add vCenter to Managed Servers
    1. Back to menu>Manage Credentials
    2. Add standard credential
    3. Add administrator level credentials to your vCenter or ESXi host
    4. Go to Backup Infrastructure> Managed Server
    5. Right click, Add a Server
    6. Choose Vmware vSphere
    7. Choose vSphere
    8. Add FQDN or IP of vCenter
    9. Add credentials
    10. Apply
    11. Continue on certificate warning
    12. Hit Apply and then Finish

Conclusion

We now have all of our on-premises Windows components built out. For many if not most customers this is all that is needed to be ready for good on-site backups, but in the next post we’ll cover setting up the linux variants of proxies and repositories to give you some comparison capabilities.

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