Scenario
Due to bandwidth restrictions or a large amount of data, the initial full backup copy of you data will likely take a large amount of time, therefore a seed load to our cloud connect repo is the best course of action
Prerequisites
To get the ball rolling you would need to contact us requesting a seed load or we may recommend it when discussing requirements for a new order. Our sales team will then give you a quote for the seed load.
- An installation of Veeam Backup And Replication
- An external hard drive (we can provide)
- A seed load reference from Vitanium
When to Seed Load
As a general rule we recommend a seed load according to the graph below
If your upload speed/datasize crossover hits a red section, a seed load would be recommended
Adding External Hard Drive As A Repository
1. With the hard drive connected to the machine, open Backup and Replication - Backup Infrastructure - Backup Repository - Add Repository:
2. Select Direct Attached Storage. Name the repo. On the next stage of the wizard you should see the machine you are using under repository server. Select the populate option and the external hard drive should now appear as well as any local drives:
3. Select the folder on the drive you wish to the backup files to be stored
4. Complete the repository creation wizard, the external drive will now be listed under backup repositories
Creating the Seed
1. Create a new Backup Copy job, an in depth article can be found here
This job will initially be used to generate the seed but after seeding is complete, this job will map to the seed. Add the servers to this job that need to be seeded.
The Backup Copy job must meet the requirements below.
a. There should not be any spaces or unsupported characters in the Backup Copy Job name. (any spaces needed can be substituted with an underscore "_")
b. We are using per-VM files in our repository, therefore the the external hard drive the backup copy job is targeting should also user per-VM files
2. Run the Backup Copy job once to create a full backup file (VBK) and a metadata file (VBM) in the intermediate backup repository (the external hard drive). Once complete disable the backup job, right click on the job and select disable from the menu:
Post Seed Creation
1. Once the seed has been created you will need to run a "remove from configuration" on the backup created. When this is run all the backup files remain in the repository.
a. In Backup and Replication go to the home tab
b. Under backups select disk, right click and select remove from configuration as below:
2. Contact us to confirm the seed has been created so we can schedule an engineer to install the drive at the data center once it arrives with us.
Post Confirmation Of Successful Upload To Cloud Connect Repository
We will contact you once the seed load is successfully added to the cloud connect repository you must then follow the below steps for mapping the job.
1. Rescan the cloud repository.
a. In Backup and Replication, open backup infrastructure from the option in the bottom left.
b. Select backup repositories, right click on the cloud connect repository to get the rescan option as below
c. Under home - backups - cloud backup files should now appear. Navigation to find these can be seen below
2. Edit the original backup copy job to change the repository to the Cloud Repository.
a. Under jobs select the backup copy job and select edit
b. The only step we need to change is under "target". This must be changed to point to the Cloud Connect repository instead of the external disk as before.
3. Click ‘Map Backup’ underneath the target repository and select the Backup Copy that was uploaded from the external drive.
4. Enable the Backup Copy job, right-click the job, and select ‘Sync Now' to link the job with the seed.
