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- Protecting the Veeam Backup & Replication server
Protecting the Veeam Backup & Replication server
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Purpose
This article provides information about protecting the Veeam Backup & Replication Configuration.
This information answers the common question, "How do I back up the Veeam Server?" To which the answer is: "Do not back up the backup server configuration using backup jobs in Veeam Backup & Replication." Instead, users are encouraged to focus on protecting the configuration of the software through the use of Configuration Backup. In a situation where a Veeam Backup Server is lost, a new machine should be created, Veeam Backup & Replication installed, and a Configuration Restore performed to restore all the settings from the old Veeam Backup Server into that new deployment. Review the rest of this article to learn more!
Solution
Protect Veeam Backup & Replication
To protect the Veeam Backup & Replication configuration, use Configuration Backup, which is built-in and enabled by default. The default configuration for Configuration Backup is to occur once a day at 10 AM, writing to the Default Backup Repository. After you create the first Repository, Veeam Backup & Replication will prompt you to ask if you'd like to change the Configuration Backup to use that new Repository.
Configuration Backup Advice
- Reconfigure the Configuration Backup to send the configuration backup files (.bco) to a secure location that will not be lost if the Veeam Backup Server is lost.
Example: Don't store the configuration backup files on the C:\ of the Veeam Backup Server, as losing that would cause a loss of the software and the configuration backup. - Enable encryption for the Configuration Backup to make restoring the backup configuration a smoother experience. When restoring from a configuration backup, all accounts stored in the credentials manager are restored. If the Configuration Backup was not encrypted, you would have to enter each account password manually. After enabling the encryption option, Veeam Backup & Replication will create encrypted configuration backups containing the passwords stored in the credentials manager. So that when you restore, you will not have to enter passwords for credentials records again (unless the passwords for credentials records have changed by the time of restore).
- For an added layer of protection, a File Copy job can be configured to copy the backup configuration (.bco) files from one location to another.
Do not back up the backup server configuration using backup jobs in Veeam Backup & Replication. Veeam Backup & Replication uses snapshots during VM backup and replication jobs, and snapshot creation and removal may freeze the Veeam Backup Server VM causing:
- Disconnection from the configuration database. For more information, see the Veeam KB1681 article.
- Disconnection from remote Veeam Backup & Replication agents.
- Disconnection from network storage (for example, storage presented through iSCSI) and so on.
For this reason, you must always use the configuration backup functionality to back up and restore the configuration of the backup server.
Recover Veeam Backup & Replication
Secure Veeam Backup & Replication
More Information
Other than the built-in Configuration Backup job, no other type of backup or replication job should be used to back up the Veeam Backup & Replication server. In addition to the potential impacts described in the User Guide, the following should be considered:
- Replicating the Veeam Backup Server or any VMware Backup Proxies to the same vCenter can break Hotadd transport mode due to duplicate BIOS UUIDs of the actual proxy VM and replica. (see Solution #9 on KB2008).
- If the server hosting the Veeam Backup & Replication configuration database is placed in a Backup or Replication job, that job will only run when no other tasks are running. Additionally, a backup job containing the Veeam Backup Server will block all other tasks from starting until it is completed.
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