I’ve completed my fair share of Veeam deployments in environments where there is an existing backup solution.
The question that comes up the most is, what do I do with my legacy backup data?
Well, here are my thoughts around best practices for this situation.
Option 1 Perform restores of protected data using the legacy backup software for selected restore points to a staging area, once Veeam has re-protected the VMs the legacy backup solution can be retired. VeeamZip is a great option here.
Pros
- Removal of the legacy backup solution
Cons
- Time-consuming if re-protecting a large amount of VM data
- Very time-consuming if restoring from tape
- Can be complicated if dealing with large amount of restore points & VMs
- Requires a staging area to restore the VMs to
Thoughts: I see this option used when it’s not possible for the legacy backup data to be simply left to expire. Perhaps the retention period is too great or restore requests are frequent from legacy restore points. This method is not very common requires as it requires a lot of time and resources to reprotect the restored data in Veeam.
Currently there is no Veeam migration tool to migrate legacy restore points to Veeam automagically.
Option 2 Suspend existing backup solution and maintain existing legacy backup data in the event of a restore being required before Veeam was implemented. Any backup data that expires/passes their retention period can be deleted to reclaim space.
Pros
- Less work and much easier
Cons
- Existing backup solution is taking up resources, if installed on a physical server then it is taking up space, if it’s powered on then cooling & power costs. If it’s a virtual machine it is taking up disk space on your production storage.
Thoughts: This is the most common option taken in my experience, any legacy licenses aren’t renewed and the the legacy backup data is left to expire.