Using the 3-2-1 Rule with Veeam
This is very versatile nowadays, but with Veeam, you can take it to the next level — to the 3-2-1-1-0 Rule, where each of the following implementations would count towards a successful configuration. Consider deploying one or multiple solutions into your environment:
- There should be (3) copies of data:
- Backup Copies and Scale-out Backup Repositories.
- On (2) different media: consider replicating Virtual Machines to another location
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Veeam Replication and Continuous Data Protection.
- With (1) copy being off site: copying or moving data offsite or into the cloud to free up your local backup repository
- Backup copies for longer retention.
- Replication to create a copy of data at another location.
- Scale-out Backup Repositories to copy and/or move data to tier it into the cloud.
- With (1) copy being offline, air-gapped or immutable:
- Veeam Backup & Replication makes immutable native backups possible: Hardened Linux Repository, Amazon, Azure and S3 compatible Object Lock immutability.
- Tape is the original form of immutability and air-gap protection. With every growing threat of ransomware and data growth, tape remains a core component of the Veeam data protection solution.
- And (0) errors with automated testing and recovery verification:
- Ensure that the backup and restore process is functioning correctly by testing backups and restores.
- Schedule SureBackup jobs to ensure that your backups are recoverable.
- Automate and protect further with Veeam Recovery Orchestrator.
Achieve the 3-2-1 backup rule with Veeam Cloud Connect, built into Veeam Backup & Replication, by sending backups offsite to a VCSP partner’s datacenter for a secure, clean backup copy. No additional licensing required! Find a partner
Top Veeam Considerations
Knowing these top Veeam Backup & Replication considerations can help improve the efficiency and effectiveness of your backups and data replication:
- Backup Window: Make sure you schedule backup jobs outside of business hours to avoid impacting daily operations.
- Backup Type: Choose the appropriate backup type based on your recovery point objectives (RPOs). For example, if you need to recover data quickly, use incremental backups instead of full backups.
- Storage Optimization: Consider enabling Veeam's built-in compression and deduplication features to reduce storage requirements and improve backup performance.
- Data Encryption: Consider turning on Data at rest encryption (DARE) on the underlying repository hardware if possible.
- Bandwidth Throttling: If you are replicating data across a WAN, consider using bandwidth throttling to limit the amount of network bandwidth used during replication.
- Repository Optimization: Make sure your backup repositories are optimized for the type of backup being performed. For example, use a high-performance storage system for frequent backups or large-scale backups.
- Backup Copy Jobs: Consider using backup copy jobs to create off-site backups or archive data to less expensive storage.
- Scale-out Repositories: With Veeam Scale-out Backup Repository, you can define rules and policies that determine where backups are stored and how long they are retained. It also provides load balancing for backup jobs, automatically routing backups to the most appropriate storage device based on available capacity and performance. This can help to ensure that backup jobs are completed successfully and that recovery times are minimized.
- Monitoring and Reporting: Use Veeam's monitoring and reporting features to keep track of backup and replication performance, errors and other issues.
- Backup Verification: Schedule SureBackup jobs to ensure that your backups are recoverable.
- Test Backup and Restore: Ensure that the backup and restore process is functioning correctly by testing backups and restores. This will give you peace of mind knowing that you can restore your data when needed.
- Plan for Disaster Recovery: Develop a disaster recovery plan to ensure that you can recover your data in the event of a disaster. This includes setting up offsite backups, defining restore processes and testing disaster recovery scenarios.
- Keep Veeam Up to Date: Ensure that Veeam Backup & Replication is up to date with the latest patches and updates. This will ensure that you have access to the latest features and bug fixes.
Define Retention Objectives
It’s important to consider your short-term and long-term retention policies, these often vary by business requirements.
- Short-term retention is often for locally saved restore points that let you quickly restore data.
- Forever-forward incremental: This backup chain creates a first full backup file and a set of forward incremental backup files following it. This retention type cannot be used with Scale-out Backup Repository™ (SOBR) move functionality since it doesn’t create inactive chains.
- Forward incremental: This backup chain creates full backups and incremental points, but adds in weekly full or synthetic backups to break up chains as well.
- Long-term retention is an important consideration for multiple reasons. Being able to restore from weekly, monthly, or yearly points in time, this is considered "grandfather, father, son” (GFS) at Veeam. This retention can be applied in many ways with our products, like through backup copies or by tiering data out in the cloud with SOBR.
- GFS flags can be assigned only to full backup files created during the time specified in GFS policy settings.
- GFS points are the only restore points that would be moved to the archive tier.
- GFS can be configured within a primary backup, backup copy, or tape job.
- Continue reading in the User Guide.
Did you know?
In addition to applying a retention policy within a job session, Veeam Backup & Replication performs background retention for backups which aims mostly at backups that are no longer processed by jobs. However, this retention can also be helpful for standard backups, in case backups are created by jobs without schedule, the job retention has not been yet applied or failed for some reason and so on. Continue reading.
Suggested resources:
- Animated Retention Policies to demonstrate retention logic
- Backup job has too many restore points - considerations and causes
- Background Retention
Define Recovery Objectives
Based on the analysis of your recovery time objectives and recovery point objectives (RTOs and RPOs), you can define your protection plan and select the features that are most suitable for your business needs.
When making a business continuity and disaster recovery (BC/DR) plan, you must define two important parameters:
- RPOs, or the frequency at which you need to create a recovery point. This defines the period where you could possibly lose data.
- RTOs are related to downtime. This represents the amount of time it takes for all your services to return online and become available to users from the start of the incident to the end.
Suggested resources:
- Why do recovery time and recovery point objectives matter?
- What do RTO/RPO mean for your business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR) plan
- Veeam features for your RTO/RPO needs
Security Considerations
Consider the Veeam Backup & Replication server and backup repositories to be the first targets for malware, ransomware or hackers.
- Physical security: Data center and server room access to physical infrastructures that host production or backup data.
- Infrastructure hardening:
- Console access
- Scope, roles and users (RBAC)
- Required permissions for specific features
- Security domains:
- It’s important to consider Windows security for underlying Veeam servers
- Workgroup or management domain
- It is not advisable to have Veeam servers on your primary Active Directory domain.
- Segmentation via networking:
- DMZ, trusted and untrusted zones
- Creating non-routable networks specific to backup data traffic
- Hardening backup repositories: ensuring your backup data is secure is one of your last lines of defense
- Immutability and air-gapped data: with ever-growing ransomware concerns, these are important considerations you need to have when protecting your backup data.
Suggested resources:
- Security Best Practice Guide on a broad scope of areas like security measures, technology, data management, people and processes.
- CISO Checklist for Ransomware Preparedness. Using this checklist along with ensuring all components of IT security are properly implemented and managed throughout your organization is a fantastic starting point.
Need a qualified professional to implement and manage your Veeam solutions? Discover the value-added services of Veeam-Accredited Service Partners (VASPs) — a new way to resolve the complex product installations and business issues you face. Find a partner
Next up! Get ready for Step 3 of your onboarding journey. At the next step you can find additional resources about these topics.
If you need more help getting started, you can post your question in the comments section below or contact us at any time and someone from the Customer Success team will be there to assist you.