VMware Data Recovery vs Veeam?

[saiello]

I am in a new job, and we are using Veeam as our backup solution.  Previously we were using Veritas to backup our VM's at the OS level, and this is the way in which I'm using to doing backups.  We are currently using Veeam and this sokution seems PAINFULLY slow.  We are in the process of migrating out environment from 4.1 to 5.x and I am considering migrating our backup solution as well. 

Can any one give me their opinion of Data Recovery vs Veeam?  I feel Veeam is painfully slow but their techs tell me our implimentation is quite fast.

Thank you,
Steven

[vMario156]

In a virtual environment you should always use a special (virtual) backup tool (like Veeam, vRanger etc.) and not continuing doing the backup like in a physical environment.

I am backing up every day terabytes of VMs with Veeam B&R v6 and its amazing fast and easy do use. The processing speed of one backup job is around 300 - 500 MB/s.

You should check your setup (there are many configurations which have a big impact of the speed: transportation mode etc.).

Data Recovery can´t compete with Veeam B&R at all. This also wouldn´t be a fair competition because it´s a free product vs. a some hundret dollar per cpu per host product.

Regards,

Mario

[markokobal]

Hi,

Well, I'm completely satisfied with VMware Data Recovery. I'm backuping about 60 vms with about 3 TB of data and it's really fast (less than 1 hour for each day run). It needs some tuning and good understanding of how it works ... but when you got it running it does a wonderful job for a free product.

[Josh26]

Marko Kobal wrote:

3 TB of data and it's really fast (less than 1 hour for each day run). It needs some tuning and good understanding of how it works ...

With the 1Tb datastore limit, you must be cutting it quite close, even with dedup, if you are retaining regular backups?

[markokobal]

Hi,

a) 1 TB deduplication store limit is not a hard limit, only a suggested maximum from VMware, mainly because of potential performance issues. I'm currently using 1.5 TB for each destination, whereas I'm using 2 destinations per vDR appliance. Currently I'm not seeing any performance issues and have still plenty of room.

b) You can easily deploy several (up to 10) vDR appliances and have even more place.

So, just go ahead and try vDR, its really doing a great job.

[scottyyyc]

It would help if you threw some numbers out there (eg. we back up 50 vms, roughly 2TB of data, incremental takes 10 hours, etc).

My experience is that Veeam is WAY faster than traditional backup products (like Backup Exec). At a past company we used Veeam, and a reverse incremental backup of about 12 VMs (about 1.5TB of data) took about 30 minutes, or roughly 3-4min per VM. At my current company, we use backup exec, and I can barely get a backup to even work within any sort of reasonable time frame. Our incrementals on about 30 VMs take the better part of a week. I'd give anything to go back to Veeam right now!

Maybe provide some numbers to help provide some context.

[mustafa11]

Hi Markokobal

Could you please some information about tune vdp?

Kr,

[vmroyale]

Note: Discussion successfully moved from VMware ESXi 5 to Backup & Recovery

[Josh26]

Marko Kobal wrote:

Hi,

a) 1 TB deduplication store limit is not a hard limit, only a suggested maximum from VMware, mainly because of potential performance issues. I'm currently using 1.5 TB for each destination, whereas I'm using 2 destinations per vDR appliance. Currently I'm not seeing any performance issues and have still plenty of room.

b) You can easily deploy several (up to 10) vDR appliances and have even more place.

So, just go ahead and try vDR, its really doing a great job.

Except vDR is no longer a supported product, so we'd be talking about VDP.

VDP has HARD limits, there's no way around the sizing issues.

I have no idea how you managed the performance you talk about. We ran it in non-critical environments for a while, but even systems small VMs seemed to run backups for entire nights.

[markokobal]

Except vDR is no longer a supported product, so we'd be talking about VDP.

Not true. VDR is still fully supported, but yes, it is true that it is not developed anymore. Anyway, version 2.0.1 is very stable and has everything that we need.

VDP has HARD limits, there's no way around the sizing issues.

Unfortunately, VDP has many other limits and lacks some functionality that are present in VDR, but not in VDP. That's the main reason we are still on VDR. Hopefully the next version(s) of VDP will catch-up with VDR and then we'll switch to VDP. So I have still no experience with VDP by now.

but even systems small VMs seemed to run backups for entire nights

Then something is wrong in your environment configuration. What kind of storage are you using and how it is connected (FC, iSCSI) for the VMs and for the VDR destinations? Make sure that VDR never backups the VMs to the storage where VMs lives (which would be a nonsense, anyway).

[mustafa11]

Hi Markokobal

Could you please some information about tune vdp?

Kr,

[Josh26]

Marko Kobal wrote:

Not true. VDR is still fully supported, but yes, it is true that it is not developed anymore. Anyway, version 2.0.1 is very stable and has everything that we need.

I should probably rephrase. Since vDR is not only not being developed, but doesn't run on current versions of VMware, electing to use it, particularly relevant to a new installation, means deploying old versions of software just to enable that functionality.

Even if it has everything you need now, at some point ESXi 5.0 will be out of support and it would be hard to provide "everything we need" for any company at that point.

Then something is wrong in your environment configuration. What kind of storage are you using and how it is connected (FC, iSCSI) for the VMs and for the VDR destinations? Make sure that VDR never backups the VMs to the storage where VMs lives (which would be a nonsense, anyway).

It's a moot point for myself as we aren't running it now.

But I will agree that I've walked into environments setup by others, where people regularly, for some reason, decide that vDR/VDP backups to the same device as the primary data, is a "disaster recovery" solution. It's terribad to do this.

[markokobal]

Since vDR is not only not being developed, but doesn't run on current versions of VMware

Well, that is absolutely not true, vDR runs just fine on vSphere 5.1! You have lots of misunderstanding regarding the usage of vDR and you should really go through the documentation thoroughly. vDR is merely an appliance, that is, an CentOS 5 virtual machine, with pre-installed application called "datarecovery" inside. This app works as a backup software - basically what it does it just makes snapshots of the VMs and copies the snapshot to the backup destination (which indeed is an virtual disk, formatted in ext3 and mounted in the vDR) ... during the copy it uses de-duplication and compression which makes copying really fast and efficient. So there is no reason why vDR wouldn't run on vSpere 5.1 and even further versions of vSphere. Your misunderstanding probably comes from the fact, that VMware shows vDR as an vSpehere 5.0 product and vDP as na vSphere 5.1 product ... but as I said - we (and I guess many others) are running vDR on vSphere 5.1 just fine (also, VMware does not limit you to use vDR on vSphere by EULA).

@mustafa1: Could you please some information about tune vdp?

As I already said, I have none experience with vDP until now.

[Josh26]

Marko Kobal wrote:

Since vDR is not only not being developed, but doesn't run on current versions of VMware

Well, that is absolutely not true, vDR runs just fine on vSphere 5.1! You have lots of misunderstanding regarding the usage of vDR and you should really go through the documentation thoroughly.

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=201656...

Q: Is VDP replacing VDR (VMware Data Recovery)?
Yes. VDR is not supported with vSphere 5.1 and higher

http://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2012/08/setting-the-record-straight-on-vmware-vsphere-data-protectio...

Chirag shah on September 25, 2012 at 3:14 am said:

VDR will be supported in 5.1, mean if need to upgrade from 5.0 update1 to 5.1 then compulsary I need to migrate from VDR TO VDP?

Hunter on September 25, 2012 at 1:15 pm said:

• Yes, that is correct and I am sorry to say there is currently no upgrade path from VDR to VDP. As you cut over from VDR to VDP (after upgrading vCenter to 5.1), it might make sense to keep a host at 5.0 and keep the VDR appliance around for a few months to perform a VDR restore, if needed

  
  

It doesn't feel like a failure to read documentation to me.

[mustafa11]

i installed and it is working good but file level backup is not professional solution and type backup is not suportted.

[arminmacx]

Im using Veeam and it is really fast and better than vDR. vDr is good for very small office and it has few limitation like size and how many vm per vDR

that why i use Veeam for my company.

you should take look and some configuration depend on your design and enviroment.

Veeam is simpler than vDR in my idea.

[ch1ta]

From my perspective, even though Veeam B&R is a third-party product, it still has many advantages over the new VDP. Some of them:

1. No limits on backup repository
   
   
2. Orchestration between multi-appliance deployment
   
   
3. Instant VM recovery functionality, which allows you to instantly recover any VM into your production environment by running it directly from backup file.
   
   
4. SureBackup technology. Automatic recovery verification functionality.
   
   
5. VDP needs vCenter to work. It cannot backup VMs on “standalone” hosts.
   
   
6. Veeam can recover individual application items (email messages, database records, directory objects, etc.) from any virtualized application. VMware defers to third-party vendors for this—and other—advanced backup and recovery capabilities
   
   
7. Veeam can also boast of its Direct SAN processing mode. Backup proxy server retrieves protected VM's virtual disks directly from production storage over SAN fabric, thus providing LAN-free data retrieval mechanism that does not affect production ESX(i) hosts or management network.
   
   

More information about aforesaid features can be found at Veeam site.

Hope this helps.
Thanks.