I'm trying to figure out the best approach to back up these systems
2x Windows Server 2019 VMware VMs in a failover cluster with a file share witness for quorum
Running only a file server role
Using 'storage spaces direct'/S2D with 5x250GB virtual disks on each of the 2 nodes
These are backed up via a 'protection group' defined on the Veeam server. This deploys the veeam agent to each machine and backs up at a volume level instead of VM level.
A recent issue required a restore of one of the 2 VMs, and the process was an absolute nightmare, which has led me to believe that it’s not really possible to properly restore from this type of backup into a virtual environment. Everything about it seems to assume that you’re backing up from and restoring to bare-metal.
I was able to restore the system volume from the veeam server but it completely skipped the clustered data disks. I guess it assumes that you will restore the clustered disks afterwards? Anyways, the issue is that the data volume is split across multiple virtual disks and those all need to be restored and recreated for S2D to work, but since it’s a volume level backup there’s no concepts of the underlying virtual disks.
I've tested doing regular VM backups instead, and this seems to completely negate all the above issues, full VM restores are trivial. But it introduces a new one - file level restores no longer work. The clustered/shared volume does not appear at all in the veeam backup file browser.
Any suggestions for a backup technique that would both allow file restoration and full VM restoration?
2x Windows Server 2019 VMware VMs in a failover cluster with a file share witness for quorum
Running only a file server role
Using 'storage spaces direct'/S2D with 5x250GB virtual disks on each of the 2 nodes
These are backed up via a 'protection group' defined on the Veeam server. This deploys the veeam agent to each machine and backs up at a volume level instead of VM level.
A recent issue required a restore of one of the 2 VMs, and the process was an absolute nightmare, which has led me to believe that it’s not really possible to properly restore from this type of backup into a virtual environment. Everything about it seems to assume that you’re backing up from and restoring to bare-metal.
I was able to restore the system volume from the veeam server but it completely skipped the clustered data disks. I guess it assumes that you will restore the clustered disks afterwards? Anyways, the issue is that the data volume is split across multiple virtual disks and those all need to be restored and recreated for S2D to work, but since it’s a volume level backup there’s no concepts of the underlying virtual disks.
I've tested doing regular VM backups instead, and this seems to completely negate all the above issues, full VM restores are trivial. But it introduces a new one - file level restores no longer work. The clustered/shared volume does not appear at all in the veeam backup file browser.
Any suggestions for a backup technique that would both allow file restoration and full VM restoration?
Statistics: Posted by jloube — Nov 28, 2024 6:54 pm