Is Veeam the best solution for my server + tape drive configuration?

Although a tape-based backup solution (e.g.: Veeam) is a tried & true solution, I personally prefer a disk-to-disk solution for local and offsite disaster recovery (DR) backup and recovery. For long term (archiving) storage, I will implement a disk-to-tape (from my backup storage to tape).

If you want to continue using a tape-based backup solution, then you may want to consider Quest’s NetVault. It covers nearly all OSs and apps available today. NetVault also allows for disk-to-disk backup using either virtual tape libraries (VTLs) or SmartDisk.
support.quest.com
support.quest.com

For Windows servers and many Linux OSs, you may want to consider Quest Software’s Rapid Recovery (RR). It is easy to use and can recover files, volumes and full systems very fast. The one RR limitation – NFS-based shared volumes; developers are still working on a solution.

Since you mentioned SUSE, here are the versions supported by Rapid Recovery:

· SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 11 SP2 (or later SP)

· SLES 12, 12 SP1, 12 SP2, 12 SP3
support.quest.com

Questions:

1) What version of VMware vSphere, SUSE, and other OSs are you using?

2) In addition to SAP, what applications are you running on those servers?

3) For how long do you need to retain your data?

In terms of the SAP application, I have not yet seen Rapid Recovery used.

I believe it is. As I can see, there are recommended specifications for Veeam Environment which is running a workload of 13 VMs. Most importantly you should understand what VMs are for. And if it is a financial company what can they afford to lose (RTO) and what time they are prepared to be offline (MTTR).

I would recommend having at least one local repository. Small staging storage for small period local retention and be able to copy to a tape for performance issues. Depending on what kind of data you need to write to a tape library I would recommend an Oracle Storage SL150 with the ability to write on more than one tape simultaneously.

If you can afford to have second storage outside of the primary site, then you can use Veeam to replicate from the local storage to this distant storage. I couldn’t see in this case that you have a second data center. If so, then you will need a proxy server on both sites to have Veeam Data Manager to compress the data for performance issues.

Veeam is the most friendly, flexible to implement and easy to scale while you need, so I recommend you to use it.

Veeam is better with disk or S3 storage than tape, and a single tape drive – not a changer or library- can be a bit of a hassle with most SW. But yes, Veeam is probably what you want.

Typically we would recommend more cores for a backup server. Eight would probably work considering it's a smaller environment with 11 VM. A couple of other questions.

1. How much memory is in the backup server?

2. How much storage locally is on the backup server? We would recommend writing to disk first then tape as a copy job.

3. What is the retention of the environment?

Commvault would be the other option that would work as well for an environment like that.

There are many other solutions that do not involve tape, some with Veeam software and others with different solutions. The note mentions replication, which would seem to indicate some other recover storage solution. I would look at a backup storage solution that includes replication and determine if you have the need for a full backup software solution like Veeam. Cloud-based backup and recovery solutions provide a lot of features if we can allow the data to be in the cloud. Veeam, Cohesity, and Rubrik seem to be on everyone’s short list with disk-based and/or cloud-based backup/recovery storage.

The first thing to figure out is that Veeam can not backup directly from production to tape. It needs a disk space as a stage before pushing to tape. So server + Tape is not good with Veeam. It should be server + Disk + Tape.

Secondly, expecting SAP backup from Veeam assume the following:
- You have SAP HANA 2.0 SPS 02/SPS 03/SPS 04. Express Edition is not supported.
- Veeam B&R update 4 Enterprise plus Edition is required.

I have been using Veeam for the last five years without major issues. I recently implemented the latest version to backup 400+ VMs and at least five physical servers. The integration of the HPE Library shouldn’t be an issue. You can reach Veeam or HP to confirm the compatibility. Veeam is affordable and easy to administer.
You can also use a backup to disk or object storage in the cloud.

In terms of the Backup Server, the spec seems reasonable, although I do not have the full picture in terms of the amount of backup data and the backup window, etc. In terms of the tape out requirement, Veeam does not perform direct backups to Tape and therefore the backup data needs to land on a disk device prior to being moved to tape, so that would need to be sized.

In terms of SAP, is this SAP on Oracle or SAP HANA? Veeam has a plugin for SAP HANA and Oracle RMAN. If SAP is on Oracle on VMware, then we can protect the Oracle data in a consistent manner, or we can use pre and post scripts to quiesce the application prior to backup. The document link below should also provide information on the protection of SAP on Oracle.

dsimg.ubm-us.net

You wrote :

Production Servers - 2 - 2 x HPE ProLiant DL360 Gen10 Server (2 x Intel Xeon Silver 4208 Processors) - 512Gb RAM with SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 1-2 Sockets for OS

I would have to consider:

1- What application is running at the Linux?

2- If at the LINUX there is Oracle application then Veeam is not so good.

3- Veeam is the preferable backup to DISKS and NOT to tape.

4- I think you should consider another software backup to DISKS + DEDUP + COMPRESSION (because of the Oracle which needs RMAN procedure to backup via Agent).

What does your client want to achieve with his backup solution? Do they have any specific retention periods for regulatory or legal purposes? What backup with down or period of downtime for backing up can they spare? Any view as to the recovery time or point objectives. Ultimately Veeam is a very powerful product. If it was me and they are already tuning Veeam there are reports and data you can run looking at performance. This will help give you the best view of the backup, its performance, and as such, then you can tell whether it's setup and recovering the right stuff.

We at Bacula can help you with a free fully guided Proof of Concept. Within 30 days you know exactly if Bacula Enterprise Edition is the perfect match for you!
www.baculasystems.com

Veeam Data's successful restore rate is high.

I wouldn’t use tape library, you can use a NAS solution to store Veaam backup repositories.

For this kind of environment, I don't see a better solution besides Veeam.
You can try Veeam Community Edition Free with full features for 10 instances (10 VM) without paying anything.
www.veeam.com