Performance scales out as you add nodes, since you are adding more controllers. In case you aren’t familiar with Nutanix, on each node (server) there is a controller VM which services all I/Os for the VMs running on that host. The following figure depicts a virtualized Veeam backup solution. For example, you may want to consider the 6000 series hardware which are ‘storage heavy’ for your secondary cluster. Depending on the amount of data you are backing up and your retention policies, you may or may not want the same Nutanix hardware models as your production cluster. Should you have a problem with the production Nutanix cluster, your secondary cluster is unaffected.

This is where the virtualized Veeam Backup & Replication server (along with the data repository), would reside. The cluster would be comprised of at least three Nutanix nodes. So the first best practice for a 100% virtualized solution is to use a secondary Nutanix cluster. When virtualizing solution the last thing you want is your backup data stored in the same location as the data you are trying to protect. For example, if you have requirements for tape-out, then you will need at least one physical server in the mix to connect your library to since tape Fibre Channel/SAS pass-thru is not available in ESXi 5.x. In short, our joint solution is flexible enough to meet your requirements and efficiently use your physical assets. You could also use existing dedicated backup appliances. The architecture is flexible enough to enable the use of either 100% virtualized Veeam components or a combination of virtual and physical components, depending on customer requirements and available hardware. The combined Veeam and Nutanix solutions leverage the strengths of both products to provide network efficient backups to enable meeting recovery point objective (RPO) and recovery time objective (RTO) requirements. The web-scale Nutanix solution and its data locality technology are complimented by the distributed and scale-out architecture of Veeam Backup & Replication v7.

Veeam is modern data protection for virtual environments, and are also a great sponsor of my blog. It also includes and easy to follow checklist of all the recommendations. The whitepaper covers all the applicable technologies such as VMware’s VADP, CBT, and Microsoft VSS. This post will highlight some of the major points and how customers can head off some potential issues. The goal of the joint whitepaper between Veeam and Nutanix is to help customers deploy Veeam Backup & Replication v7 on Nutanix, when used with VMware vSphere 5.x. The official whitepaper can be downloaded here. Note: This article has been significantly updated on 4/18/14 with new information, in a great collaborative effort with Luca Dell’Oca ( Veeam.

Veeam exchange backup best practices