Integrating Veeam Backup and Replication and Symantec Backup Exec 12
INTRODUCTION
This document highlights some necessary steps required to setup a successful Veeam Backup and Symantec Backup Exec 12 for tape integration, may help understand low level technology and make right choices when implementing a backup strategy. Veeam Backup 3.x provides a disk-to-disk backup solution for VMware virtual machines. Veeam Backup 3.x currently does not provide internal functionality to archive virtual machine backups to tape. Veeam appreciates that some clients may have a need for this functionality and have provided a way of interfacing between Veeam Backup 3.x and a third-party tape solution. The solution described in this document relates to Symantec Backup Exec 12. The need may arise to archive to tape if say for example the client requires to offsite the backup images in case of a disaster. Traditionally backup tapes would be used for this kind of scenario but some clients may argue that it’s cheaper to use removable hard -drives to perform the same function. If this is the case the client need not acquire third-party tape software.
JUSTIFICATION
A lot of companies are moving away from the traditional disk-to-tape solution in favour of a Veeam disk-to-disk solution but those companies who still require a tape solution are finding by utilising a hybrid approach they can save on costs and produce a fast, stable backup strategy by using Veeam Backup 3.x to transport consistent copies of the virtual machines to disks whist using just a standard base version of the tape solution to archive to tape. With this hybrid approach there is no need to invest in expensive agent technology normally used by tape solutions. Veeam Backup offers 100% visibility of ESX and VCB and has been developed to interface with these technologies from the get go.
ASSUMPTIONS
For convenience we are taking it for granted that VCB, Veeam Backup and Symantec Backup Exec 12 are installed on the same server although what you learn from this document you could apply to different scenarios too. For the rest of this document we’ll now refer to this server as the backup proxy.
It’s also taken for granted that you are fully conversant with Veeam Backup and Symantec Backup Exec 12. This is not a tutorial for those applications. .
Integrating Veeam Backup and Symantec Backup Exec 124
STEP TO A SUCCESSFUL INTEGRATION
1. Create a folder on accessible storage to the backup proxy. It’s important that you do this before setting up your Veeam Backup job.
2. Using Backup Exec create a job to backup the above folder to the relevant media set but not schedule it to run at any given time. Please make a note of the Job name used as we’ll be referencing this in a command later. It’s a good idea to make it simple in this example we used “MainServers” for the job name
3. In the folder created before create a dummy text file just for the purpose of testing.
4. Run the Backup Exec job manually to make sure that it completes successfully and ran automatically with prompting the administrator for any dialog. This step is necessary as Veeam backup does not have the ability to interface with the Backup Exec GUI to automatically answer dialog windows. However certain tasks are executable from the Backup Exec CLI which we’ll see later.
5. Next create you Veeam Backup job. Ensure you make a note of the “number of rollbacks to keep” When you get to this dialog box there is an Advanced button which you must select.
6. At the bottom of the first tab is an option to “Run the following command”, make sure it’s enabled. Then remember the “number of rollbacks to keep” enable the “Run every” option and specify the same value. The idea is to set off a command-line to activate Backup Exec every time Veeam has reached a full cycle.
7. 7. Next in the text field input the following command: “c:\Program Files\Symantec\Backup Exec\bemcmd” -o1 –jMainServers
like so: The idea is to run Backup Exec from command-line using the bemcmd executable passing the following parameters:
-o1 – Which instructs Backup Exec to start a Job
-jJOBNAME – Which runs a job using the Job name which in our case is called MainServers.
Now Backup Exec will stream the contents of the folder to tape.
RESTORING
Restoration takes a little more management. If you want to restore from the tape archived copy you have to remember that the Veeam files on tape are now out of date and note registered within Veeam Backups database. So to retrieve files from tape you have to follow the following steps:
1. Using Backup Exec restore the archived Veeam Backup Files to another location other than the original.
2. In Veeam Backup 3.x you have the option to import Backup files for use with restoration. Open the Backup Menu and select “Import Backup”:
3. Next browse and find the newly restore .vbk file and click OK:
4. Now when you walk through the restore wizard you should see an extra job to restore from which has the same job name as before but with “_imported” on the end. You may now restore for virtual machines in this job.
CONSIDERATIONS
In previous versions of Backup Exec there was an issue with running more than 1 command-line activated job which may still exist. It’s possible to prompt the job to wait until it’s finished before running another job by including the “-w” switch on the command-line.
Please bear in mind that this process is a manual process out of the normal operations of Backup Exec so you may have to also manually manage things like tape cycling. Every environment is different and we’d urge you to perform some primarily tests to formulate a solution that suits your environment.
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THE FLOW PROCESS
Following is the flow process used to achieve the utilisation of Veeam Backup to backup virtual machines and then initiating the third-party tape solution to archive the backup images to tape:
