Veeam Backup &

Replication 9.5
Nutanix Best Practices

Version 2.0 • February 2019 • BP-2017

 Veeam Backup & Replication 9.5

Copyright
Copyright 2019 Nutanix, Inc.
Nutanix, Inc.
1740 Technology Drive, Suite 150
San Jose, CA 95110
All rights reserved. This product is protected by U.S. and international copyright and intellectual
property laws.
Nutanix is a trademark of Nutanix, Inc. in the United States and/or other jurisdictions. All other
marks and names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective companies.

Copyright | 2
 Veeam Backup & Replication 9.5

Contents

1. Executive Summary.................................................................................4

2. Introduction.............................................................................................. 5
2.1. Audience.........................................................................................................................5
2.2. Purpose.......................................................................................................................... 5
2.3. Synergistic Technologies................................................................................................5

3. Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Overview...................................................... 7

3.1. Nutanix Acropolis Architecture.......................................................................................8

4. Veeam Backup & Replication Architecture........................................... 9

4.1. Component Overview.....................................................................................................9
4.2. Veeam Component Sizing........................................................................................... 11
4.3. Deployment Models..................................................................................................... 12
4.4. VMware vSphere Support............................................................................................14
4.5. Microsoft Hyper-V Support...........................................................................................20
4.6. Nutanix AHV Support...................................................................................................23
4.7. Veeam Backup Job Best Practices............................................................................. 24
4.8. Veeam Restore Options...............................................................................................25
4.9. Recommended Operating Systems............................................................................. 25

5. Conclusion..............................................................................................26

Appendix..........................................................................................................................27
About Veeam....................................................................................................................... 27
About Nutanix...................................................................................................................... 27

List of Figures................................................................................................................ 28

List of Tables.................................................................................................................. 29

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 Veeam Backup & Replication 9.5

1. Executive Summary
Veeam is the Premier Availability solution provider for Nutanix, which offers a highly scalable
virtualization platform for desktop, server, and big data deployments. This document makes
recommendations for the optimization and scaling of Veeam Backup & Replication 9.5, part of
the Veeam Availability Suite, with Nutanix. It shows the scalability of the Nutanix Enterprise Cloud
and provides configuration information on the scale-out capabilities of both Veeam Backup &
Replication and Nutanix.
Veeam Backup & Replication 9.5 and later versions support features that can increase backup
performance and reduce backup windows. For vSphere, Veeam Backup & Replication supports
the Direct NFS backup method to minimize network bandwidth consumption. For Hyper-V 2016
environments, resilient change tracking (RCT) is available with Nutanix storage. Most recently,
Veeam has also added support for AHV environments, using snapshots, Changed Block Tracking
(CBT), and per-VM parallel processing.

1. Executive Summary | 4
 Veeam Backup & Replication 9.5

2. Introduction

2.1. Audience
This best practice document is part of the Nutanix Solutions Library. We intend it for individuals
responsible for the architecture, design, management, and support of Veeam Backup &
Replication on Nutanix systems. Consumers of this document should be familiar with VMware
vSphere, Microsoft Hyper-V, Veeam Backup & Replication, and Nutanix, including AHV.

2.2. Purpose
This document covers the high-level best practices for Veeam Backup & Replication 9.5 with
Nutanix, using VMware vSphere 5.5 through 6.7, Microsoft Hyper-V 2012 R2 and 2016, and
AHV.
This best practice guide focuses on an optimized disk-to-disk backup architecture. Veeam
Backup & Replication has several architecture options, and this guide covers the best practices
jointly developed by Veeam and Nutanix.
Unless otherwise stated, the solution described in this document is valid on all supported AOS
releases.

2.3. Synergistic Technologies

The distributed and scale-out architecture of Veeam Backup & Replication 9.5 strongly
complements the web-scale Nutanix platform and its data locality technology. The combined
solution takes advantage of the strengths of both products to provide crash, OS, or even
application-consistent, network-efficient, and totally agentless backups, helping organizations
achieve their recovery point objectives (RPOs) and recovery time objectives (RTOs). The
architecture is flexible enough to support either 100 percent virtualized Veeam components or
a combination of virtual and physical components, depending on customer requirements and
available hardware.

2. Introduction | 5
 Veeam Backup & Replication 9.5

Table 1: Document Version History

Version
Published Notes
Number
1.0 September 2017 Original publication.
Updated for AOS 5.5 and Veeam Backup & Recovery
1.1 January 2018
9.5 U3.
Updated recommendations regarding Enable Same
1.2 February 2018
Host Direct NFS mode.
Updated solution overview and added best practices
2.0 February 2019
for Nutanix AHV.

2. Introduction | 6
 Veeam Backup & Replication 9.5

3. Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Overview

Nutanix delivers a web-scale, hyperconverged infrastructure solution purpose-built for
virtualization and cloud environments. This solution brings the scale, resilience, and economic
benefits of web-scale architecture to the enterprise through the Nutanix Enterprise Cloud
Platform, which combines three product families—Nutanix Acropolis, Nutanix Prism, and Nutanix
Calm.
Attributes of this Enterprise Cloud OS include:
• Optimized for storage and compute resources.
• Machine learning to plan for and adapt to changing conditions automatically.
• Self-healing to tolerate and adjust to component failures.
• API-based automation and rich analytics.
• Simplified one-click upgrade.
• Native file services for user and application data.
• Native backup and disaster recovery solutions.
• Powerful and feature-rich virtualization.
• Flexible software-defined networking for visualization, automation, and security.
• Cloud automation and life cycle management.
Nutanix Acropolis provides data services and can be broken down into three foundational
components: the Distributed Storage Fabric (DSF), the App Mobility Fabric (AMF), and AHV.
Prism furnishes one-click infrastructure management for virtual environments running on
Acropolis. Acropolis is hypervisor agnostic, supporting three third-party hypervisors—ESXi,
Hyper-V, and Citrix Hypervisor—in addition to the native Nutanix hypervisor, AHV.

Figure 1: Nutanix Enterprise Cloud

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3.1. Nutanix Acropolis Architecture

Acropolis does not rely on traditional SAN or NAS storage or expensive storage network
interconnects. It combines highly dense storage and server compute (CPU and RAM) into a
single platform building block. Each building block delivers a unified, scale-out, shared-nothing
architecture with no single points of failure.
The Nutanix solution requires no SAN constructs, such as LUNs, RAID groups, or expensive
storage switches. All storage management is VM-centric, and I/O is optimized at the VM virtual
disk level. The software solution runs on nodes from a variety of manufacturers that are either
all-flash for optimal performance, or a hybrid combination of SSD and HDD that provides a
combination of performance and additional capacity. The DSF automatically tiers data across the
cluster to different classes of storage devices using intelligent data placement algorithms. For
best performance, algorithms make sure the most frequently used data is available in memory or
in flash on the node local to the VM.
To learn more about the Nutanix Enterprise Cloud, please visit the Nutanix Bible and
Nutanix.com.

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 Veeam Backup & Replication 9.5

4. Veeam Backup & Replication Architecture

4.1. Component Overview

Veeam Backup & Replication has a scale-out architecture, in which multiple components (both for
control and data processing) work together in a coordinated fashion. We provide a brief overview
of these components below; please visit veeam.com for a deep dive on Veeam technologies.
The next two tables highlight the different components and technologies related to virtualization
and guest OS for the joint solution.

Table 2: Backup Components

Component Description
Nutanix Controller VM The Nutanix Controller VM (CVM) runs the Acropolis DSF
and serves all the I/O operations for the hypervisor and VMs
running on that host. The CVM pools and exports storage to the
hypervisor using the appropriate protocol.
Veeam Backup Server As the “brain” of the solution, Veeam Backup Server is
responsible for job management and scheduling, indexing
tasks, and general orchestration of the backup and replication
environment. The Backup Server can be virtualized.
Veeam Backup Proxy A backup proxy is a lightweight Veeam architecture component
that sits between the data source and the backup target,
processing jobs and delivering backup traffic. Backup proxy
tasks include retrieving VM data from production storage,
then compressing, deduplicating, and sending that data to the
backup repository. Using more than one virtualized (or physical)
backup proxy lets you easily scale your backup infrastructure
based on the size of your Nutanix system.

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 Veeam Backup & Replication 9.5

Component Description
Veeam Repository These systems provide the memory, storing backup archives
and their related metadata for future restores. A repository may
be a Windows or Linux server, a third-party NAS device, or a
deduplication appliance. Repositories can be virtual or physical,
depending on requirements and available hardware. If the
repository is virtual, create fault domain isolation by storing it
separately from the Nutanix cluster that holds production data.

Table 3: Backup Technologies

Technology Description
VMware VADP Available in all licensed editions, VMware vStorage APIs for
Data Protection (VADP) is a framework that enables efficient
agent-free backups. Veeam Backup & Replication 9.5 uses the
VADP framework for high-performance backups.
vSphere CBT Changed Block Tracking (CBT) is a component of VADP that
enables efficient incremental VM backups. It enables Veeam
Backup & Replication to back up only changed data blocks,
thus greatly increasing backup performance and reducing
network bandwidth. Read operations occur locally, eliminating
the load on the network and on other Nutanix nodes.
Hyper-V 2016 RCT New to Hyper-V 2016 is native resilient change tracking
(RCT) for VHDX virtual disks. RCT enables Veeam Backup &
Replication 9.5 to back up VMs efficiently and minimize backup
windows. RCT offers a major improvement over Hyper-V 2012
R2, where incremental backups on Nutanix needed a full disk
scan to identify changed blocks, thus requiring additional I/O
and much more time.
Microsoft VSS Microsoft VSS is the framework for application-consistent
backups for Windows OS. Built into the operating system, VSS
enables the creation of a consistent snapshot of application
data, such as Microsoft Exchange, SQL, Active Directory,
or the NTFS file system. Veeam can use VSS to ensure
application-consistent backups for VSS-aware applications. All
hypervisors support enabling VSS in backup jobs. Veeam uses
VSS in a completely agentless fashion, using the hypervisor
communication stack to the benefit of the guest OS.

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 Veeam Backup & Replication 9.5

4.2. Veeam Component Sizing

Sizing Veeam Backup & Replication servers depends on the number of concurrent jobs, the total
number of VMs, and the estimated repository size. The sizing guidelines in the table below are
the minimum that Veeam recommends. The Veeam proxy VMs, used only with vSphere, should
not need additional resources. We recommend the scale-out virtual proxy model based on the
total number of Nutanix nodes.

Note: For additional and more detailed sizing considerations, please refer to the
official Veeam best practices, available at https://bp.veeam.expert/.

Physical backup proxies are supported, but not ideal. A general rule for a physical proxy is one
core per 50 VMs, but this number greatly depends on VM size and the number of concurrent
backups. Proper testing for your environment is critical to ensure that you can meet backup
windows and RPOs. You may need to upsize the Veeam Backup & Repository server for your
environment.

Table 4: Veeam Sizing Recommendations

Test sizing in the customer environment to verify that you can

meet the backup window and RPOs.
—Virtual: One vCPU for every 50 VMs (recommended
minimum: two vCPUs), 4 GB RAM, 300 MB disk space for
Veeam Backup Proxy VM installed components, and VMXNET3 NIC for vSphere. No
(vSphere only) CPU or memory reservations are required.
—Physical: One CPU core for every 50 VMs, 2 GB RAM for
each concurrent disk backup. As the environment grows,
ensure that you have one (v)CPU and 2 GB of RAM for each
concurrent task.

4 GB RAM plus 500 MB RAM for each concurrent job. Disk

space: 2 GB for product, plus 10 GB per 100 VMs for guest
file system catalog, and at least 10 GB for the VM recovery
Veeam Backup Server cache folder. No CPU or memory reservations required. Apply
additional sizing considerations if the backend SQL server
is deployed on this server. See Veeam documentation for
additional guidance.

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 Veeam Backup & Replication 9.5

The Veeam Repository can be colocated with the backup

server role for small deployments or placed on a dedicated
server (physical or virtual Windows or Linux server, NAS
device, or backup appliance), and requires sufficient free
Veeam Repository space to store all backup job data. If a vSphere VM is used, we
recommend using the VMware PVSCSI controller for the disks
that store backup data. If virtualized on Nutanix, the repository
should reside in a secondary Nutanix cluster for fault domain
isolation.

4.3. Deployment Models

Veeam Backup & Replication supports a repository server using a variety of targets, including
VMs running on a secondary Nutanix cluster, existing physical servers, NAS appliance, or
dedicated backup appliances. The following two sections provide guidance for two of these
scenarios:
• Fully virtualized solution on Nutanix.
• Hybrid model that uses virtual proxies but has a physical repository configured for tape role
support.

Fully Virtualized Backup Architecture

The figure below shows a production Nutanix vSphere or AHV cluster, with each node hosting a
Veeam proxy VM. A secondary Nutanix cluster hosts the Veeam Repository. Such a configuration
ensures that even if the entire primary cluster fails, the Veeam repository is not within that failure
domain and can thus be used to restore the production environment. A Nutanix Hyper-V cluster
would look similar, replacing the proxy VM with a lightweight component installed in each Hyper-
V parent partition. If tape support is not a requirement, we recommend using a 100 percent virtual
architecture.

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 Veeam Backup & Replication 9.5

Figure 2: Fully Virtualized Backup Architecture

Hybrid Virtual and Physical Architecture

As an alternative to deploying a virtualized Veeam repository, the figure below shows a notional
topology for a physical Veeam repository and tape role configuration. You can use this topology
when you need tape backup, because tape backup requires a physical server to hold the tape
server role. For this architecture, we recommend using a hybrid approach. For vSphere, place a
backup proxy VM on each Nutanix node. For Hyper-V, use the parent partition Veeam Backup &
Replication agent. The Veeam Backup & Replication server and repository can be either VMs or
physical servers, but the tape role must be physical.
The physical Veeam server should have dual 10 GbE NICs connected to the same layer-2
network that the hypervisor management and CVMs use. The physical server should meet the
minimum Veeam sizing requirements, based on the number of VMs you are backing up and
concurrent jobs. Larger environments may require multiple Veeam servers to meet backup
window or storage capacity requirements. Refer to Veeam documentation for further sizing
guidance.

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 Veeam Backup & Replication 9.5

Figure 3: Physical Veeam Server Topology

4.4. VMware vSphere Support

VMware vSphere Backup Architecture
Veeam Backup & Recovery 9.0 added Direct NFS as a transport method for vSphere
environments that use NFS datastores; Direct NFS supports both NFS 3.0 and 4.1. Nutanix and
Veeam recommend that vSphere customers configure Veeam Backup & Replication to use the
Direct NFS method, as it provides the highest possible performance and minimizes the physical
network load.
When using VMware vSphere, deploy a Veeam proxy VM on each Nutanix node. Create DRS
“should” rules to pin each Veeam proxy VM to the proper node. This ensures that the backup
proxy accesses the CVM IP locally, rather than across the network. Deploying one proxy VM per
node is the only way to enable Veeam Backup & Replication Direct NFS technology with Nutanix.
If you cannot use Direct NFS for some reason (such as the presence of an existing VM
snapshot), Veeam Backup & Replication seamlessly falls back to network transport mode.
However, network transport mode does not perform as well as Direct NFS, so backup windows
may take longer.
The figure below shows the recommended configuration for each VMware ESXi host in the
environment that you want to back up with Veeam Backup & Replication. It’s critically important
to place the ESXi VMkernel port, public CVM interface, public Veeam backup proxy interface,
and Veeam repository (VM or physical) on the same VLAN using 10 GbE. In this example, the
10.10.10.x network is the production management network.

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Figure 4: Recommended Configuration for VMware ESXi Hosts

Direct NFS
Direct NFS has several advantages over other transport modes and offers the best performance
and shortest possible backup windows. Each Nutanix node needs a local Veeam backup
proxy VM, as shown in the diagram above. The backup proxy is dual homed, with one NIC on
the internal Nutanix vSwitch, and the other NIC on the same network or VLAN that the ESXi
management network uses. The Nutanix whitelist then allows the backup proxy to access the
NFS datastores via the 192.168.5.0 network. Finally, within Veeam Backup & Replication, you
can configure the “preferred networks” rule to use the Nutanix 192.168.5.0 network for backups.
See Veeam’s Specifying Preferred Networks for Data Transfer article for more details.
We recommend using DRS “should” rules to pin each backup proxy VM to its respective host. In
addition, each backup proxy VM should have a unique 192.168.5.x address. This unique address
ensures that there is no IP conflict on the internal network during maintenance operations where
two proxy VMs may be on the same host.
During backup jobs, the Veeam Backup & Replication status screen displays a message
like “Using backup proxy VMware Backup Proxy for disk hard disk 1 [nfs]” (see the figure
below). If you look at the more verbose backup log file, you should see “Connected to NFS
server: 192.168.5.2, port 2049” and some additional NFS information. If you have completed
the configuration steps above and set the EnableSameHostDirectNFSMode registry key
appropriately, you shouldn’t need to do anything else. For additional information, refer to Veeam
DirectNFS documentation.

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 Veeam Backup & Replication 9.5

Figure 5: Veeam Status Screen with NFS Confirmation

To optimize backup traffic within the NFS backend of Nutanix, we recommend implementing a
Veeam proxy for each ESXi host and enabling Veeam’s Same Host Direct NFS mode (value = 2,
as described below) in the registry.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Veeam\Veeam Backup and Replication
Key: EnableSameHostDirectNFSMode
Type: REG_DWORD
Value = 2

Value options:
• 0 (default): Disabled.
• 1: Preferred Same Host. If a Direct NFS proxy exists on same host, Veeam waits for a free
task slot there. If a proxy on same host does not exist, Veeam uses another Direct NFS proxy
(on another host or physical server) or falls back to virtual appliance (hot-add) and finally to
network (NBD) mode. This mode is not recommended with Nutanix.

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 Veeam Backup & Replication 9.5

• 2: Same Host Direct NFS mode. Recommended for Nutanix. If there is no Direct NFS proxy on
the same host as the VM, it falls back to network mode (NBD).

Limitations for Direct NFS Access Mode

Direct NFS access mode has the following limitations:
• Direct NFS access mode cannot be used for VMs that have one or more snapshots (delta
disks).
• Veeam Backup & Replication uses Direct NFS transport mode to read and write VM data only
during the first session of the replication job. During subsequent sessions, the VM replica
already has one or more snapshots. Therefore, Veeam Backup & Replication uses another
transport mode to write VM data to the datastore on the target side. The source side proxy
keeps reading VM data from the source datastore in Direct NFS transport mode.
• If you select the Enable VMware Tools quiescence option in the job settings, Veeam Backup
& Replication does not use Direct NFS transport mode to process running Microsoft Windows
VMs that have VMware Tools installed.
• If a VM has disks that cannot be processed in the Direct NFS access mode, Veeam Backup &
Replication processes these VM disks in network transport mode.
• The proxy VM’s data path to the CVM (via the private Nutanix vSwitch) does not fail over to
another CVM. If a CVM becomes unavailable (for example, during an AOS upgrade) while
an active backup job is running, the backup job for that node may fail. For this reason, do not
perform CVM maintenance operations while there are active jobs.

Network Transport Mode

When you can’t use Direct NFS, Veeam Backup & Replication fails back to network transport
mode. Network transport mode connects to the ESXi management VMkernel port and transfers
backup data to the proxy. It uses the VMware Network File Copy (NFC) protocol, which has a
maximum throughput limit of around 40–50 percent of the VMkernel interface.
vSphere 6.5 and some versions of the VMware VDDK may require encryption of VMkernel traffic
(NBD), though enabling NBD encryption can have up to a 30 percent negative performance
impact. VDDK 6.5.0b removed the SSL requirement for NBD, making SSL optional. Beginning
with version 9.5 update 3, Veeam Backup & Replication installs VDDK 6.5.0b—thus, by default,
NBD traffic is not encrypted. For previous Veeam versions with vSphere 6.5, use Direct NFS as
much as possible. Customers can force NBD over SSL (NBDSSL) if they need to (for example,
when backing up encrypted VMs), but be aware of the potential performance impact.
If you configure the Veeam proxy as described in the Direct NFS section above, you don’t need
to make any changes to use network transport mode. If, however, you only want to use network
transport mode (and never use Direct NFS), the Veeam backup proxy can use a single NIC

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 Veeam Backup & Replication 9.5

that is on the same production management network that the ESXi hosts and CVMs share (for
example, 10.10.10.x).

Note: For performance reasons, we strongly discourage the exclusive use of

network transport mode except in very small environments with small VM change
rates.

For the best performance of network transport mode, the ESXi management VMkernel port
must use the dual 10 GbE NIC interfaces. Managing the ESXi host through the 1 GbE NICs
severely degrades backup performance. Rather than using the 1 GbE NICs, consider creating
an additional VMkernel port over an available 10 GbE NIC interface, then configuring the Veeam
preferred backup network to use this network.

Virtual Appliance Backup Mode (Hot-Add)

For NFS environments such as Nutanix, we strongly discourage the use of virtual appliance
backup mode (hot-add). This mode increases the load on vCenter and may lead to orphaned
snapshots; also, snapshot commits may stun VMs. Only configure the Veeam VMware proxy to
use direct storage access (Direct NFS) or network transport mode.

VMware vSphere Best Practices

• Use Veeam Backup & Replication version 9.5 update 3 or later for all environments (required
for EnableSameHostDirectNFSMode operation).
• If using vSphere 6.0, use at least ESXi 6.0 Build 5572656 (6.0 patch 5) to avoid serious CBT
bugs. We recommend using the latest patch wherever possible. See VMware KB 2143832 for
ESXi build numbers.
• Use AOS 5.5.x or later for all vSphere environments.
• Deploy one Veeam proxy VM per ESXi host, each with a unique IP on the 192.168.5.x
network.
• Set EnableSameHostDirectNFSMode to 2 (Veeam Backup & Recovery 9.5 U3 and later).
• Create DRS “should” rules to pin each Veeam proxy VM to the appropriate node.
• If you are using a virtualized repository server, configure a second SCSI controller to use with
the VMware PVSCSI controller. Add the repository disks to this second controller.

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 Veeam Backup & Replication 9.5

Figure 6: Second SCSI Controller

• Always use the VMXNET3 NIC for Veeam Backup & Replication VMs.
• Use the latest VM hardware version for Veeam Backup & Replication VMs.
• If you are using the VMware Distributed Switch (recommended), use LBT load balancing.
• Right-size the proxy VM according to Veeam best practices for your environment.
• Connect the ESXi VMkernel, CVM, backup proxy, and repository via 10 GbE on the same
layer-2 network.
• Use Direct NFS. Do not use network transport mode unless the environment is very small with
small VM change rates.
• Do not use virtual appliance backup mode.
• Do not enable NBDSSL unless required. If NBDSSL is required, be prepared for the
performance impact. See the screenshot below.
• When configuring the Veeam VMware proxy, select Direct storage access and enable
Failover to network mode, as shown in the screenshot below.

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 Veeam Backup & Replication 9.5

Figure 7: Transport Mode Options

• Configure a Veeam Backup & Replication global traffic rule to use the 192.168.5.0 network for
backups.
• Review Veeam logs to confirm that backup jobs really are using Direct NFS.

4.5. Microsoft Hyper-V Support

Microsoft Hyper-V Backup Architecture
In contrast to the vSphere and AHV deployment model, using Veeam Backup & Replication
with Hyper-V does not require per-node proxy VMs. Instead, Veeam installs a lightweight proxy
component into each Hyper-V parent partition as it is added to the Veeam Backup Server. The
figure below depicts this architecture.

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 Veeam Backup & Replication 9.5

Figure 8: Fully Virtualized Backup Architecture on Hyper-V

As with VMware environments, it’s critical for performance that the Hyper-V management
interface use the dual 10 GbE NICs. Nutanix requires that the Hyper-V management interface
and CVMs use the same layer-2 network. In addition, the Veeam Repository (VM or physical)
should also use the same layer-2 network for best performance. Introducing routing or other
network devices, such as a firewall, between the proxy agents and the repository can negatively
impact performance. The figure below shows the orange management network (10.10.10.x) on
which the Hyper-V management, CVM, and Veeam Repository reside.

Figure 9: Recommended Configuration for Microsoft Hyper-V Hosts

Microsoft Hyper-V 2016 has built-in RCT. Using this feature, Veeam Backup & Replication 9.5
can greatly reduce backup windows after completing the first full backup job.

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 Veeam Backup & Replication 9.5

Note: Because Hyper-V 2012 R2 does not have a native RCT mechanism, every
backup job on Hyper-V 2012 R2 performs a full disk scan, no matter how small the
deltas from the last backup.

As the cluster uses more storage, more data moves to the cold tier in hybrid Nutanix clusters. In
Hyper-V 2012 R2 environments, this cold tier utilization can lead to reduced backup performance
over time.
Veeam Backup & Replication has its own CBT mechanism for Hyper-V 2012 R2, but this
mechanism is not available with Nutanix storage. We encourage customers to use Hyper-
V 2016, which is fully supported by Nutanix. Check the Nutanix Support Portal for the latest
supported hypervisors and AOS versions. Refer to the Veeam Backup & Replication 9.5 Hyper-V
documentation for the requirements to enable RCT.
When backup products such as Veeam Backup & Replication start a backup, the process
engages VSS at the file share (container) level. To ensure reliable VSS performance at the share
level, Nutanix supports 50 or fewer VMs per container during backup operations. If you are
backing up more than 50 VMs, create additional containers as needed with fewer than 50 VMs
each. If a container does not have VMs to back up (as in a VDI environment), the 50 VM limit
does not apply, as such a backup does not invoke VSS on the container.

Note: This VSS support policy does not apply to in-guest VSS usage, which is
transparent to Nutanix. You can configure backup jobs for in-guest application
consistency as needed without restriction.

Microsoft Hyper-V Best Practices

• By default, the Hyper-V parent partition is not included in backup jobs. Do not manually add
the parent partition to any backup job. Backup jobs must also exclude all CVMs. Only back up
user-created VMs.
• Configure backup jobs to use on-host backup as the proxy.
• Limit containers with VMs that you need to back up to 50 VMs. Create an additional container
as needed for each group of 50 VMs that is subject to a backup policy.
• A container that has no VMs to back up can support more than 50 VMs.
• For Hyper-V 2012 R2, deselect the CBT option for all jobs.
• For Hyper-V 2016, use RCT on all jobs.
• Connect the Hyper-V management interface, CVM, and Veeam Repository on the same
layer-2 network via 10 GbE.
• For optimal backup performance (namely, RCT), migrate to Hyper-V 2016.

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4.6. Nutanix AHV Support

Veeam has recently added Nutanix AHV to its list of natively supported hypervisors, allowing
agentless VM backup to standard Veeam backup repositories. A Veeam backup proxy appliance
(VM) deployed directly to the AHV cluster enables the integration, providing several benefits,
including a management experience for administrators that works like Nutanix Prism. This
appliance is responsible for basic reporting, job scheduling, backup, and restoration of AHV VM
images and disk files. The standard Veeam Windows console application handles item-level
restoration for AHV VM objects.

Figure 10: Nutanix AHV Backup Architecture

Nutanix AHV Best Practices

Proxy Appliance and Scaling

• One AHV appliance is deployed per Nutanix cluster and is responsible for backup (snapshots,
CBT, and per-VM parallel processing) as well as VM image and disk-level restore.
• The recommended AHV appliance specifications call for 4 GB RAM and four vCPUs.
However, you can scale up the appliance as needed to accommodate additional parallel
VM backup operations and meet backup window and RTO objectives. The four-vCPU
configuration processes three concurrent VM backups. If you need additional throughput, you
can add vCPUs (with 1 GB RAM per vCPU).
• If the appliance is set to “Automatically reboot the appliance to apply updates,” schedule
backup jobs to start and complete outside the automatic reboot window.

4. Veeam Backup & Replication Architecture | 23

 Veeam Backup & Replication 9.5

Networking
• For ease of deployment, connect the appliance to a network with an accessible DHCP
scope. You can assign a static IP during the appliance initialization phase or at any time after
deployment.
• For cases where this kind of networking is not practical, you can configure the IP via the Prism
console for the appliance. Refer to Veeam product documentation for specific configuration
steps.

Application-Consistent Backups
• Without Nutanix Guest Tools (NGT), VM backups are crash-consistent.
• NGT can help facilitate application-consistent backups. If the level of consistency achievable
with NGT meets your requirements, no additional steps are necessary.
• If you need fully featured application consistency, (for example, log truncation for SQL), deploy
Veeam agents instead of or in addition to agentless AHV backups. Note that Veeam AHV
support includes agent licensing.

4.7. Veeam Backup Job Best Practices

Nutanix and Veeam recommend using the forward incremental method with synthetic full
backups. This method is the default setting for jobs newly created in Veeam Backup &
Replication 9.5; you can also select it for existing jobs if you are upgrading from previous
versions. When using this method, Veeam performs a full backup on day one, then creates
incremental backups for all subsequent days. On a weekly basis, the solution synthetically
combines the available daily incremental backups with the original full backup to create a new full
backup, without the need to retrieve all the data from production storage.
The day-one backup may have lower throughput, because it reads all VM data, which may be in
the capacity tier as well as in the performance SSD tier. However, for hypervisors supporting a
CBT mechanism, all subsequent backups only read changed blocks, which are likely to be only
on the Nutanix performance tier.
This backup method offers the ability to execute forever-incremental backups on production
storage, thus reducing the load on the Nutanix cluster, among other benefits. To enable parallel
processing and increase backup performance, configure your jobs to back up multiple VMs. Also,
when you increase the number of VMs inside the same job, Veeam-native deduplication can be
more efficient. There is no need to manually configure which proxy VM the backup operations
use; Veeam Backup Server automatically distributes the VMs scheduled for processing to all
available proxies.

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 Veeam Backup & Replication 9.5

4.8. Veeam Restore Options

The joint Nutanix and Veeam Backup & Replication solution offers a variety of options to easily
recover and verify your backups and replicas. These features are implemented using Veeam
vPower technology.
Veeam vPower enables instant recovery of a VM in VMware and Hyper-V environments. Instead
of waiting for the VM to restore from backups, instant VM recovery allows you to run the VM
directly from the backup. vPower technology performs the following tasks:
• Recovery verification (SureBackup, SureReplica).
• Instant VM recovery.
• Multiple-OS file-level recovery.
• Universal Application-Item Recovery (U-AIR).
Nutanix with Veeam Backup & Replication allows you to perform both image-level and file-level
restores of backups and replicas. You can restore an entire VM and start it on the target Nutanix
node, or recover only VM hard disks, VM files (.vmdk, .vmx, .vhdx, and so on), or VM guest
OS files and folders and save them on your local machine. You can restore VMs or files at any
of the available restore points. All restores occur via the network, and you don’t need special
procedures to restore your data on the Nutanix platform.

4.9. Recommended Operating Systems

When deploying Veeam servers, use the latest approved 64-bit Windows operating system
for your environment. Nutanix and Veeam recommend using Windows Server 2016. Windows
Server 2016 is fully supported for all Veeam Backup & Replication 9.5 operations. See Veeam
Backup & Replication 9.5 documentation for more details. If you deploy Windows Server 2016
VMs, make sure your version of the hypervisor fully supports them.

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 Veeam Backup & Replication 9.5

5. Conclusion
The Nutanix and Veeam Backup & Replication 9.5 solution provides the best of multiple worlds:
industry-leading performance with the ability to scale out your backup solution as you grow
your Nutanix clusters. Nutanix offers robust support of AHV, VMware vSphere, and Hyper-V
environments, allowing the customer to choose which hypervisor best meets their requirements.
Nutanix simplicity is a natural fit with the rapid deployment and architecture flexibility of Veeam
Backup & Recovery 9.5.

5. Conclusion | 26
 Veeam Backup & Replication 9.5

Appendix

About Veeam
Veeam recognizes the new challenges companies across the globe face in enabling the Always-
On Enterprise, a business that must operate 24.7.365. To address this, Veeam has pioneered a
new market of Availability for the Always-On Enterprise by helping organizations meet recovery
time and point objectives (RTPO) of less than 15 minutes for all applications and data. Veeam
Availability Suite, which includes Veeam Backup & Replication, leverages virtualization, storage,
and cloud technologies that enable the modern data center to help organizations save time,
mitigate risks, and dramatically reduce capital and operational costs, while always supporting the
current and future business goals of Veeam customers.

About Nutanix
Nutanix makes infrastructure invisible, elevating IT to focus on the applications and services that
power their business. The Nutanix Enterprise Cloud OS leverages web-scale engineering and
consumer-grade design to natively converge compute, virtualization, and storage into a resilient,
software-defined solution with rich machine intelligence. The result is predictable performance,
cloud-like infrastructure consumption, robust security, and seamless application mobility for a
broad range of enterprise applications. Learn more at www.nutanix.com or follow us on Twitter
@nutanix.

Appendix | 27
 Veeam Backup & Replication 9.5

List of Figures
Figure 1: Nutanix Enterprise Cloud................................................................................... 7

Figure 2: Fully Virtualized Backup Architecture............................................................... 13

Figure 3: Physical Veeam Server Topology.....................................................................14

Figure 4: Recommended Configuration for VMware ESXi Hosts.................................... 15

Figure 5: Veeam Status Screen with NFS Confirmation................................................. 16

Figure 6: Second SCSI Controller................................................................................... 19

Figure 7: Transport Mode Options...................................................................................20

Figure 8: Fully Virtualized Backup Architecture on Hyper-V............................................21

Figure 9: Recommended Configuration for Microsoft Hyper-V Hosts..............................21

Figure 10: Nutanix AHV Backup Architecture..................................................................23

28
 Veeam Backup & Replication 9.5

List of Tables
Table 1: Document Version History................................................................................... 6

Table 2: Backup Components............................................................................................9

Table 3: Backup Technologies......................................................................................... 10

Table 4: Veeam Sizing Recommendations...................................................................... 11

29