Backend Scalability

Providing data protection as a service in a multi-tenant environment comprises of:

1. Backend solution: Veeam Backup and Replication (VBR)
2. Frontend solution: Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager (VBEM)

In this section, we will discuss how to scale the backend solution.

1. Separate management and tenant environments. In most environments, the service provider’s management infrastructure and the shared tenant infrastructure are completely segregated (network, storage, domain etc.). Even though it is possible to use single VBR server connected to both environments, it is highly recommended to split these and deploy dedicated backends for each.

   

2. It is not a best practice to protect all workloads with a single VBR installation. Splitting workloads between multiple VBR installations will reduce the impact during maintenance as well as spread the risk since there is no longer a single point of failure. The statement is valid for both: single vCenter/Cloud Director and multiple vCenters environments.

   There is no hard limit in the number of tenants or jobs per VBR server as it mainly depends on the amount of available resources. However, baseline recommendations are:

   • For an environment with single vCenter/Cloud Director, 5000 VMs is the recommended maximum number for a single VBR installation. For more than 5000 VMs, consider deploying additional VBR pods for same platform.
   • For an environment with multiple vCenter servers in same environment, the best practice is to use one dedicated VBR deployment for each 5000 VMs. However, when designing consider potential growth of the platform in advance. For example, consider 2 vCenter servers with 3000 VMs and 1000 VMs and 15% yearly growth. In this case, it is recommended to deploy 2 dedicated VBR servers from the beginning (one for each vCenter).

   

3. It is not a problem to have multiple VBR servers connect to the same VMware vSphere environment. However, the recommendation is to not share roles between different VBR servers as different servers are not aware of each other which can lead to overloading certain components. All VBR roles (proxy, repository, mount server, etc.) must be dedicated to only one VBR server. Sharing servers and roles can lead to load balancing issues and complicate software upgrades.

   NOTE: Repository role should be dedicated to a single server, however backend storage can be shared.
   

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