This article will focus in the new Veeam feature, Scale-out Backup Repository.

This a feature that will benefit costumers that struggle with Backup Storage space. Like me in my Backup Environment.

We have only 2 Backup repositories. One for Daily/Weekly Backups and one for Monthly Backups. But have around 20Tb of Space. And always have problems with the retaining jobs from Weekly and Monthly. Or I have space in the Daily/Weekly Repository, or I have in the Monthly. And always need to shuffle around jobs and Backups to arrange space.

So this is an exactly example to enable Scale-out Backup Repository so that Veeam can manage the free space better between repositories.

What is the Scale-out Backup Repository?? You can read more in detail HERE.

Main benefits are:

• Leverage your storage investments — Unused storage from any storage device, including servers with local or direct-attached storage (DAS), network attached storage (NAS), or deduplication appliances can be added into a single Scale-Out Backup Repository, saving you the costs of acquiring and maintaining new storage devices
• Simplify backup job management — Backup files can be transparently spread across multiple storage devices of the Scale-out Backup Repository, removing the need to individually assign each job to a specific backup repository – and size each job accordingly. This dramatically simplifies repository capacity management, and allows you to significantly reduce the number of jobs needed to back up your entire environment
• Improve backup performance — Full and incremental backup files can be assigned to separate storage devices for improved synthetic full backup creation and transformation performance using the backup files placement policy. In addition, different types of backup files can be matched with different types of storage devices according to cost and performance considerations.

Besides of what you can read in this Veeam Blog post, in a simple term is to merge and Groups all your Backup Repositories into a single one that will be manage and use as a unique target for Copy or Backup. It will be use by Veeam to allocate Backup Jobs between them(in this case 2, but the feature is Unlimited Scale-out ).

It can be use with one Storage vendor, but also with all mixed. So you are not bound to a unique Storage Vendor, you can use a mix of multiple Storage vendor to create one unique Repository for your Copy\Backups.

After this small introduction, lets start creating a Veeam Scale-out Backup Repository.

Like I said, we have 2 repositories, one with 8.5Tb and the other with 10.5Tb

Create Scale-Out Backup Repository

• Start you Veeam Backup Console and go to Backup Infrastructure Option(where you have your Backup Repositories). Then choose the option Scale-Out Repositories and add a new one.

• Then add the repositories that you need to create the Scale-Out Backup Repository(in this case was 2, but you can have 10/20 whatever are your needs and just choose 2/3, or even all).

Note: As you can see I have the 2(one Daily/Weekly and another Monthly)

• Just select your Repositories and click OK and then Next

In our case we get this error: “Unable to add Backup EQ Month because it is a target for one or more jobs types which are not supported by a scale-out backup repository”

• Clicking “Show jobs” we can see which jobs are not supported and are preventing we create the Scale-Out Backup Repository.

In this case was “Backup Configuration Job”.

Note: I want to add this error in this article because is important. Most costumers have their Veeam Backup Configuration Backup files in one of the Backup Repository that is used to backup VMs.

So the solution here is to change the Backup Configuration Job to another repository(that we will not use in the Scale-Out Backup Repository), or to save them to another share folder we may have in the server.

We should never save this files in our Guest Local disks. Because if we loose the Veeam Backup Server we will also loose these backups to restore our Veeam Backup Server.

In these case since we did not have any other iSCSI LUN in this Veeam Backup Server, so I create one with 5Gb to allocate these Backup Configuration files.

After created the iSCSI LUN and added to the Windows(configured trough iSCSI Initiator and also formatted the Disk)  we have another LUN in this Server.

Since this will use a Veeam Backup Job, and that needs a Backup Repository, we needed to create a new Backup Repository for this 5Gb LUN.

Create Backup Repository

• Again to Backup Infrastructure Option in the Left Side menu, and then Backup Repositories.
• Then is just a normal Backup Repository, I will only add the print screens.

• Click Populate(to display all Disks that exists in this Veeam Backup Server) and choose the disk(in this example is the G: drive)

• Here we don’t need to change anything. But since this is just for Backup Configuration Files, I did change the “Limit maximum concurrent tasks to:” 1

• Here since we have already a vPower NFS service and this Repository Backup is not to be used to any VMs Backup, we will disable vPower NFS for this repository.

• Next is jut Next and Finish

After we finish creating the new Backup Repository, we need to change Veeam Configuration Backup job to save now in the new repository.

Configure Backup Configuration Backup Job

• In the upper left menu, choose Configuration Backup

• Choose the new Backup Repository created before.

• Click Apply and then click Backup Now. After this, just browse into your new G: drive and check if you have a new Backup Configuration File. If yes, all is working.

Note: I recommend that you move all your old Backup Configuration Job Files from the old backup folder, or drive, to this one.

After we finish to change this Repository and Backup Configuration Files, we can resume our Scale-Out Backup Repository.

Create Scale-Out Backup Repository

• Again start you Veeam Backup Console and go to Backup Infrastructure Option(where you have your Backup Repositories). Then choose the option Scale-Out Repositories and add a new one.

As we can see in the next image we have now 3 Backup Repository, but we will only use the 2 previous ones(Daily-Weekly and Monthly), and leave unselected the new one.

Since we will want all Incremental and Full Backup to be in all physical LUNs(Backup Repositories), we will choose Data Locally. If you want to divide Incremental and Full Backup in particularly LUNs(in Veeam Backup Repositories), we need to choose Performance and then click Advanced. Here you can choose each Backup Repository to enable whit that type of backup that will hold for each Repository.

Note: You can read a little bit more about these options HERE: (or just click F1 when your are in the section)

Just click Next and the Scale-Out Backup Repository is created. All backup jobs now will disperse between all your Backup Repository that you add into this Scale-Out Backup Repository.

Note: When finish, just run a Backup Job(and incremental and a Full Backup) and double check if the backups finish properly and you don’t see any issue.