We have been using and recommending Veeam for quite some time. The local backup product has been very solid, and always improving. The replication piece of the software on version 5 was quite non-functional. If you’re considering setting up replica jobs, make sure your support is up to date, and go ahead and upgrade to Veeam 6, it will save you a some headache.

Back in earlier versions of Veeam, the Veeam server performed all operations. When you wanted to replicate, the only workable way to get replication working was to actually pull the replicas to the replica target site. This would then break the ability to reasonably reseed your replicas. Now with Veeam 6, they have added proxy support, main benefits:

• One Veeam server can handle the local backups and push of the replicas, all scheduling and maintenance can be handled from one location.
• Proxies check the resources of the proxy host, and recommend parallel processing limitations based on available resources.
• Slower-link WAN replication can utilize optimized compression, and even track status of the job if a link fails, not losing the valuable replication time.

Some things to keep in mind, so you don’t have to learn the hard way:

• Don’t leave Proxy Selection set to Automatic unless you have a simple local disk or local SAN target. Architect your setup in a sensible manner, run a source proxy on the local server, or even closer to the Virtual Host. Run your target proxy (for replicas) as close as possible to the target Virtual Host. If you have multiple proxies, and leave any jobs set to Automatic, you might be surprised to find a remote proxy in use for a local job.
• Once a proxy is deployed, go back and verify the settings under Backup Infrastructure. Make sure the concurrent tasks indicator shows a green check mark. For remote proxies, set the Transport Mode to Network. Don’t leave Automatic to chance again, as you could see terrible performance.
• Ensure you’re running the latest copy of Veeam, there may be a patch, and as of this post, there is an essential patch to bring you up to version 6.0.0.158 publicly available, plus another from support with a smaller set of issues. There is a good thread in the forums discussing the known v6 issues at http://forums.veeam.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=9533 and what patches have covered the issues.
• Ensure in VMware virtual machines are running the hardware version 7 or later to take advantage of changed block tracking.