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The recommended method to replicate VMware virtual machines with a less than five-minute RPO is Veeam Continuous Data Protection (CDP). CDP is a feature that allows near-continuous replication of VMware virtual machines to a secondary site or cluster with minimal data loss and downtime. CDP uses VMware vSphere APIs for I/O Filtering (VAIO) to capture every write operation from the source VMs and send them to the target VMs in near real-time. CDP can achieve RPOs as low as seconds and enable fast failover and failback in case of a disaster.

The steps that should be taken to correct the storage configuration based on the customer’s hardening requirements are to add hardened repositories to each Scale-out Backup Repository and evacuate the data from the CIFS extents. A hardened repository is a type of backup repository that provides immutability and ransomware protection for backup files by using Linux XFS file system features and Linux access control mechanisms. A Scale-out Backup Repository is a logical entity that groups several backup repositories into one pool of storage. A CIFS extent is a type of backup repository that uses a shared folder on a Windows or Linux server as a backup target. By adding hardened repositories to each Scale-out Backup Repository, you can ensure that your backups are secure, compliant, and efficient. By evacuating the data from the CIFS extents, you can remove the risk of ransomware infection or deletion of your backups.

The recovery point objective (RPO) requirement of periodic backups every hour for gold tier virtual machines directly conflicts with the technical requirement of all backups must complete within the hours of 5 p.m. to 8 a.m. local time. This is because these two requirements are mutually exclusive, as hourly backups would need to run during the daytime as well as the nighttime, while the backup window only allows backups to run during the nighttime. Therefore, you need to get clarification from the customer on which requirement has priority and how to adjust the other one accordingly.

The types of jobs that do not support using immutability from S3 Object Lock or hardened repositories are NAS backups and Agent for Mac backups. These types of jobs do not have the option to enable immutability in their settings, unlike VMware, Hyper-V, Linux Agent, or Windows Agent backup jobs. Therefore, they cannot leverage the immutability feature of S3 Object Lock or hardened repositories to protect their backups from ransomware or malicious deletion.

References: [S3 Object Lock Immutability], [Hardened Linux Repository], [NAS Backup], [Agent for Mac]

A possible cause of failures to meet the requirement to test gold tier backups is that you cannot firewall traffic between vLANs in the SureBackup job configuration. This could prevent the gold tier virtual machines from communicating with each other or with other required services in the isolated virtual lab. For example, if a gold tier virtual machine needs to access a database server or a domain controller in another vLAN, it might fail to start or function properly in the SureBackup job. Therefore, it is important to ensure that all necessary vLANs and network settings are configured correctly in the SureBackup job.

The gold tier backup jobs have the most stringent recovery point objective (RPO) of one hour for image backup and 15 minutes for transaction log backup. This means that they need to run more frequently than the other backup jobs and create more restore points per day. Therefore, to properly plan the backup copy job settings, you will need more information on the gold tier backup jobs, such as the number of VMs, the size of backups, the change rate, the retention policy, and the bandwidth available for copying backups to the offsite location.

References: [Backup Copy], [Backup Methods], [Continuous Data Protection]

The areas that would benefit from additional analysis on areas mentioned in the case study are MSSQL, NAS, and PostgreSQL. These areas have specific backup and restore requirements that need to be considered and addressed in the design and sizing of the Veeam backup infrastructure. For example, MSSQL requires transaction log backup and application-aware processing to ensure consistent backups and point-in-time recovery. NAS requires file-level backup and storage integration to optimize backup performance and storage efficiency. PostgreSQL requires pre-freeze and post-thaw scripts to quiesce the database before backup and resume it after backup.

References: [MSSQL Server Backup], [NAS Backup], [PostgreSQL Backup]

The repository type that will be most impacted by using Veeam’s native encryption is dedupe repositories. Dedupe repositories are backup repositories that use deduplication appliances or software to reduce backup size and optimize storage utilization. However, if you use Veeam’s native encryption for backup jobs that target dedupe repositories, you will lose most of the deduplication benefits, as encrypted data blocks cannot be deduplicated effectively. Therefore, it is recommended to use either the encryption feature of the deduplication device or software, or avoid encryption altogether for dedupe repositories.

The assumption that can be made for the conceptual design is that Veeam Agent backups of sale staff laptops should be managed by the backup server. This assumption is based on the best practice and recommendation for using Veeam Backup & Replication. Veeam Agent backups of sale staff laptops should be managed by the backup server to enable centralized management, monitoring, and reporting of all agent-based backups. This can also simplify the backup configuration, scheduling, and retention for the laptop agents.