Morning,

For the best performance you’ll want one proxy per host that is within the vSAN cluster, and they should be configured with hot add mode. This way the proxy can read from the source data via SAS internally, and the only network traffic is the proxy VM talking to the physical repository.

I completely agree with @MicoolPaul.
It is best to build an affinity rule so that the proxies are nicely distributed across the servers and there is one on each VSAN node.

If there are too many Microsoft licences for you, you can also run the proxies as Linux proxies.
 

Looking to contribute with more information, as described by @MicoolPaul  and @PeteSteven , the recommended transport mode for VSAN is the virtual appliance. This mode consumes hypervisor resources, so good sizing and connectivity with the environment (at least 10Gbps interfaces) are essential.

Implementing multiple proxies per host is possible, but it is best to implement just one per host with the appropriate computing resources (vcpu and RAM).

To size these resources, refer to best practices:

https://bp.veeam.com/vbr/2_Design_Structures/D_Veeam_Components/D_backup_proxies/vmware_proxies.html

Hi @dario72 -

As others have shared, yes..a VM created solely for Veeam Proxy use is the way to go. The only Transport Modes supported are “hotadd” and “Network”, but hotadd (VM Proxy) mode is the mode which provides the best backup speed. The User Guide provides guidance on it. You can read more here:

https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backup/vsphere/virtual_appliance_mode_vsan.html?ver=120

With 20 VMs, you only need at least 1 VM to use as a Proxy in your vSAN Cluster (according to the Guide above), but for redundancy, I recommend using more than 1. The main requirement for hotadd proxies is they need access to the underlying storage (datastore) the source/backed up VMs run on.

Also, if Windows OS licensing is an issue, you can run Linux (Ubuntu, for example) OS for your VM Proxy pretty seamlessly. If you need assistance on how to set this up, I wrote a post on it, as noted below:

Let us know if you have any further questions/concerns.