Physical proxies can be configured based on price / value or (Windows) licensing requirements. Typically, in a virtual environment, proxy servers use 4, 6 or 8 vCPUs. Overall, required CPU and RAM resources utilized by backup and replication jobs are typically below 5% (and in many cases below 3%) of all virtualization resources.
Note: Performance largely depends on the underlying storage and network infrastructure. To process a 2x increase in amount of changed data, it is also required to double the proxy resources. The same rule applies if the change rate is 2x higher (20% change rate). If you need to achieve a 2x smaller backup window (4 hours), then you may double the resources - 2x the amount of compute power (split across multiple servers).
If the business can accept this increased backup window for periodical full backups, it is possible to lower the compute requirement by more than 2x and get the following result:ġ4 cores and 28 GB RAM for Incremental Backups
We recommend performing a POC to examine the specific numbers for the environment.Īs seen above, if we size our proxy servers only for Incremental Backups, every time we run a full backup the job will exceed the defined backup windows and, in this case, the full backup will take 21 hours instead of the 8 hours defined in SLA. Calculating required proxy tasksĭepending on the infrastructure and source storage performance, these numbers may turn out being too conservative. Tip: Doubling the proxy server task count will - in general - reduce the backup window by 2x. Please see related chapters for each components for further details. This means you should provide enough resources for every role assigned to this server, in addition to proxy role resources. If the proxy server is used for other roles like Gateway Server for SMB shares, EMC DataDomain DDBoost, HPE StoreOnce Catalyst, or if you run the backup repository on the server, remember stacking system requirements for all the different components. Using the above mentioned recommendations allow for growth and additional inline processing features or other special job settings that increase RAM consumption. Please consider requirements from User Guide as minimum requirements. It is best practice to plan for 1 physical core or 1 vCPU and 2 GB of RAM for each configured proxy task.Ī task processes 1 VM disk at a time and CPU/RAM resources are used for inline data reduction and encryption. Proxies do have multiple task slots to process VM source data. In this section, we will outline the recommendations to follow for appropriate sizing. Getting the right amount of processing power (compute resources) is essential to achieving the RTO/RPO defined by the business. So the OS decision can be based upon other design criterias, for example licensing. We see almost no performance differences between Windows and Linux proxies. We recommend the latest supported version of Windows Server OS or supported Linux OS for all proxies. Optimized data (normally ~50% of the source data size after compression and deduplication) will be transferred here. The traffic from the source to the proxy is not yet optimized (no compression or deduplication whatsoever), meaning that 100% of the backup data will be transferred over this link.Īlso consider a good connection between proxy and repository. It is recommended to have the proxy server as close to the source data as possible with a high bandwidth connection. Proxy Placementīased on your chosen transport mode you might require virtual proxies (Hot-Add also known as Virtual Appliance Mode) or physical proxies (Direct SAN Access via iSCSI or FC/Backup from Storage Snapshots). When thinking about proxy design you have to be familiar with the different Transport Modes to understand limitations, requirements, etc. Proxies are the work horses and are critical components to achieve good backup and restore speeds. This site uses Just the Docs, a documentation theme for Jekyll.Ĭhoosing the right Veeam proxy server design for your environment gives you much control over the impact on the vSphere infrastructure and the backup traffic flow.