Virtual Machine Backup using Veeam Communituy Edition

[swamiforlife]

I have a few critical virtual machines running on my unraid server. 

I am looking for a good daily backup solution for Unraid VM's.

Would Veeam Community Edition be a good tool to use with Unraid?

If not what other good options are available?

[MAM59]

There is an easier way, a plugin "VM Backup" exists.

 

It has one drawback, it turns off the running VM, backups it and restarts it afterwards. If you are looking for a "running snapshot" it is the wrong way to go.

But I am not sure if this is really a limitation of the plugin, or a general drawback of the used QEMU. So VEEM may have the same problem, try it out.

 

[swamiforlife]

Backups of  running vm are more efficient then having to turn the vm off and back on again. 

I will try veeam and see what happens.

 

 

 

 

[MAM59]

1 minute ago, swamiforlife said:

Backups of  running vm are more efficient then having to turn the vm off and back on again. 

I will try veeam and see what happens.

 

of course they are 🙂

keep me informed pls

 

[JonathanM]

I run the UrBackup server container in one location and the UrBackup clients in my VM's. Much easier to manage open file / shadow file / locked file issues inside the VM with a client than to try to backup the whole image file. Also the backup sets can more easily be granular restored and deduplicated for space saving with much deeper retention.

 

Added bonus that it's easy to keep my bare metal boxes in the same backup infrastructure.

[mans_]

On 7/14/2022 at 1:14 AM, JonathanM said:

I run the UrBackup server container in one location and the UrBackup clients in my VM's. Much easier to manage open file / shadow file / locked file issues inside the VM with a client than to try to backup the whole image file. Also the backup sets can more easily be granular restored and deduplicated for space saving with much deeper retention.

 

Added bonus that it's easy to keep my bare metal boxes in the same backup infrastructure.

Does MacOS backup (all types of backup) and restore work reliably for UrBackup?

[JonathanM]

9 hours ago, mans_ said:

Does MacOS backup (all types of backup) and restore work reliably for UrBackup?

No clue, I only have linux and windows in my collection.

[JC-303]

@swamiforlife, did you ever test this out?  Curious what you found if you did please.  Cheers.

[JC-303]

For anyone else googling this in the future, I have successfully set up Veeam Community edition agents on a number of windows and linux vms running on my Unraid box.  The key benefit of Veeam vs. other solutions I looked at is that it will backup a running VM without stopping it.  The backups need to be written to an unRAID directory shared to a path within the VM.  The backups occur automatically per the you schedule you set up inside the agent and only write incremental changes, so backups after the first one are very quick.

[bitcore]

On 2/10/2024 at 12:12 PM, JC-303 said:

For anyone else googling this in the future, I have successfully set up Veeam Community edition agents on a number of windows and linux vms running on my Unraid box.  The key benefit of Veeam vs. other solutions I looked at is that it will backup a running VM without stopping it.  The backups need to be written to an unRAID directory shared to a path within the VM.  The backups occur automatically per the you schedule you set up inside the agent and only write incremental changes, so backups after the first one are very quick.

Cheers for the follow-up, @JC-303, appreciate it.

 

When you say "The backups need to be written to an unRAID directory shared to a path within the VM", does this mean that if the target VM to be backed up itself gets compromised or has a ransomware infection - your backups can be destroyed as well since that share must be mounted/available? (that would be very disappointing.) Or, does this required mapping only apply to the VM running the veeam server application only?

[JC-303]

Re: your last question....

 

Veeam can be set up two ways.  1) with a veeam server that makes calls to the vm on other systems and initiates backup this way.  2) with a local veeam application running on the vm that writes backups to a shared path (NFS or SMB) available from inside the VM.  With #2, you'd be susceptible to the issue you raise in your previous post.  With #1, you wouldn't have the same exposure.

Edited May 31 by JC-303