Hello Community!

A few weeks ago at VeeamON in San Diego, the “Veeam Team” showed off a bit more of the new VDP v13 on Linux than what they did at VON2024. BTW, yes, it can still be installed on Windows if Linux still frightens you a bit  ..more on this just below*.

One new feature they showed off was the ability to configure Veeam Backup & Replication High Availability. In this Part 1 post, I will show how to do initial setup and then configure it. In my Part 2 post, I’ll show how to perform a quick failover so you can see how easy it is.

A few Disclaimers:
As you may be aware, the version of VBR I’m using is a BETA preview, so buttons, config links, and menus may be different at the time VBR v13 goes GA. Also, as with most any HA setups, enabling HA has a syncing mechanism between the primary and secondary nodes, and thus is not a backup. In other words, if something within the guest OS or Veeam gets “hosed” on the primary node, it will get sync’d (transferred) to the secondary node. As such, both nodes would be inoperable. The intent of HA is to provide you with redundancy in case the Host on which the primary VBR is on (if a VM), or if a VBR physical server, goes down (i.e. hardware issue). The 2nd VBR node would then assume primary backup duties. What enabling HA does not do is cover you in case of a whole site 1 loss. You may have a 2nd VBR node, but your source data (VMs) would be offline and thus all the Jobs being peformed by VBR node 2 would fail. The Veeam feature you’d need in that case is Veeam Replication, and a 2nd standalone Veeam server used solely for Replication being housed in the Replica (DR) site to be able perform all your DR tasks.

Initial Setup

• So the first thing you need to do is create 2 Veeam Servers. NOTE: to be able to configure HA in Veeam, the only supported install option for this feature is to install Veeam as as Software Appliance. There will be multiple ways to install Veeam VDP v13 upon GA release → Manually on Windows (for a little while longer*), manually on Rocky Linux 9.2 (only supported Linux OS for VBR and EM), or wholistically (Rocky Linux OS and VBR together; i.e. as a software appliance)
• Hopefully User Guide documentation will say this upon v13 GA, but when you install 2 VBRs, make sure to give the admin (veeamadmin) account of both VBR servers the same password. Otherwise, attempting to Create the HA Cluster (adding the 2nd node to the primary node 1) will fail.
• I won’t go through the install process here as Michael Melter did a great job in his VBR v13 install post last week...so review that post first
• After you get both servers created, allocate an unused IP in the same subnet as the VBR servers to be used as a “virtual IP” (VIP) for HA. Veeam calls this a Cluster IP
• After the 2 VBR servers get created, go to the “Control Panel URL” (Web UI) of the VBR server you designate as “primary” - https://IPorHostnameOfVBR:443 , scroll all the way to the right & click on the Gear icon (Settings) > License Information > License tab > Install button and browse to the location of your shiney new VBR v13 license (.lic) file. Only the primary server needs to have the license installed
   

  

High Availability Configuration

• Next, log into the Host Management Console of both VBR servers:
   https://IPorHostnameOfVBR:10443 > Applications section, and under the High Availablity heading click the Submit Request link to enable HA
• If you haven’t done so already, from the Web UI login screen (URL given above), download the Remote Console client (VBR Console) and install on a Windows jumpbox
   

  

• Log into the primary VBR server with the Remote Console > select the Backup Infrastructure node, and under Managed Servers , rt-click your VBR Server and choose the Create Cluster option
   

  

  Then, follow the wizard:
   

  

  

  

  

• Wait about 10-15 minutes for Veeam to sync and create the Cluster data, then log out of the Remote Console, and then re-login with the HA Cluster IP
• You can now perform normal VBR tasks or perform HA (i.e. HA Switchover) if needed

In my next post, I’ll cover how to perform a Switchover and Failover...stay tuned! Let me know if you have any questions by commenting below.

*I believe Veeam’s future install process will solely be with the software appliance method for several reasons. There will come a future release date when Windows, or even manual Linux install, will be deprecated. This is not an official Veeam statement..just my opinion