Category VMCA2022

Explanation
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.

Explanation
The additional information that is needed to define the implementation process later is how much backup data is stored on the old hardware. This information is important for designing and sizing the migration strategy and timeline for moving the backups from the old hardware to the new hardware. For example, you can use the amount of backup data to estimate how long it will take to copy or move the backups to the new storage devices. You can also use the amount of backup data to determine whether you need to use compression, deduplication, or WAN acceleration to optimize the migration traffic.
References: [Migrating Backup Files], [WAN Acceleration]

Explanation
Option C uses replica seeding to reduce the network traffic during the initial replication. By creating a backup job of the source VM at the primary site and pointing the replica job to that backup repository at the secondary site, Veeam Backup & Replication can restore the VM from the backup and synchronize it with the latest state of the source VM. Then it can use the restored VM as a replica2 Reference: Replica Seeding and Mapping – User Guide for VMware vSphere

Explanation
To design a disaster recovery solution that meets the requirement of having the replicated virtual workloads data not more than one hour old, you need to consider some of the potential risks and challenges that may affect the service level agreement (SLA) for the offsite disaster recovery aspect of this requirement. This will help you to ensure the availability and reliability of the replication and failover processes, as well as the recovery time objective (RTO) and recovery point objective (RPO) of the organization.
According to the Veeam Backup & Replication Best Practice Guide, one of the potential risks to the SLA for the offsite disaster recovery aspect of this requirement is B. Data change rate.
This risk means that:
*The data change rate is the amount of data that is modified, added, or deleted in a given time period. It is usually measured in percentage or megabytes per hour.
*The data change rate affects the replication performance and efficiency, as it determines how much data needs to be transferred and processed between the source and target sites.
*The data change rate also affects the replication frequency and consistency, as it determines how often and how accurately the replicas are updated and synchronized with the source workloads.
*The data change rate may vary depending on the type and activity of the workloads, such as database, file server, web server, etc. Some workloads may have a high data change rate, while others may have a low data change rate.
*The data change rate may exceed the available bandwidth or storage capacity between the source and target sites, which may result in replication failures, delays, or errors. This may compromise the SLA for the offsite disaster recovery aspect of this requirement, as it may cause the replicated virtual workloads data to be more than one hour old.
This risk has some implications for designing a solution with Veeam products and features, such as:
*The customer or a third-party vendor must monitor and measure the data change rate of the workloads that need to be replicated, as well as the available bandwidth and storage capacity between the source and target sites. This will help to plan and optimize the replication infrastructure, such as the proxy servers, repository servers, WAN accelerators, and failover plans, based on the data change rate.
*The customer or a third-party vendor must configure and adjust the replication settings and policies, such as the replication method, schedule, frequency, retention, compression, deduplication, etc., based on the data change rate. This will help to improve the replication performance and efficiency, as well as to meet the SLA for the offsite disaster recovery aspect of this requirement.

Explanation
The information that is missing from discovery is what the available bandwidth is between Fresno and Carson City. This information is important for designing and sizing the backup copy jobs that need to run daily between the two sites. The available bandwidth can affect the backup copy performance, duration, and size.
For example, you can use the available bandwidth to estimate how much data can be transferred between the sites within the backup copy window. You can also use theavailable bandwidth to determine whether you need to use compression, deduplication, or WAN acceleration to optimize the backup copy traffic.

Explanation
*Virtual machine backup jobs with log shipping enabled allow you to create image-level backups of SQL Server databases and also back up the transaction logs periodically12.
*Scale-out Backup Repository is a logical entity that groups several backup repositories into a single pool of storage, allowing for better backup performance, scalability, and management3.
*Scale-out Backup Repository capacity tier is a feature that allows you to offload older backup files to a public cloud object storage, such as Amazon S3 or Azure Blob Storage .
The other options are not as effective or efficient, as they either do not use Veeam features, do not offload to object storage, or do not create image-level backups.
References: 1: Transaction Log Shipping – User Guide for VMware vSphere 2: How to Back Up SQL Server Transaction Logs – Veeam 3: Scale-Out Backup Repository – Veeam Backup & Replication Best Practice Guide : Capacity Tier – User Guide for VMware vSphere : How to Use Capacity Tier in Veeam – Veeam

Explanation
According to the Veeam Backup & Replication Best Practice Guide1, some of the reasons why it is recommended to have a Veeam backup server at each of the three sites are:
*Each site has production data. This reason is based on the principle of locality, which states that backup data should be stored as close as possible to the source data, to reduce network traffic and latency, and to improve backup and restore speed and efficiency. Having a Veeam backup server at each site allows you to perform local backups of the production data at each site, without having tocross the WAN or VPN connections between sites.
Topic 1, Veeam University Hospital
Executive Overview:
Veeam University Hospital is a healthcare network with located is Boston, Salt Lake City and Columbus.
They are considered a pioneer in breakthrough treatments to many illnesses and recognized worldwide as a leader in their field. They have decided to modernize their data protection strategy due to new regulatory requirements as well as ever evolving malware issues. They suffereda ransomware attack recently as well, which affected several systems with patient treatment.
Furthermore, they have expressed interest in replication of virtual workloads between sites in case of a disaster to allow for timely failover between sites with would ensure continuity in the level of patient care offered.
Their board of directors is concerned that all virtual workloads at this point can be considered a single point of failure.
Veeam University Hospital has also been experiencing issues with the time required to back up NAS systems.
Not only are they taking too long, the amount of space required is considered excessive, and a reduction of storage space for these backups is desired.
Veeam University Hospital had issues with the time required to restore Exchange items. The current solution will only restore entire mailboxes, and no granularity is possible.
For this implementation to be successful, backups must complete in the allotted backup window, and the recovery of data should be faster than the current solution, which can amount to 24 to 48 hours for a full system restore.
Solution Concept:
Veeam University Hospital is replacing their current backup solution Veeam. They plan to protect data at all three sites, with backups copied off-site for disaster recovery purposes. They have also expressed an interest in taking action to prevent another data lost due to ransomware. The offenders were also able to encrypt the existing backups as part of the attack, so data recovery is impossible. Veeam University Hospital is also interested in any posible public cloud technologies that might help mitigate this risk.
In addition, replication of running workloads to secondary sites will also be implemented to allow for site failover in the event of a disaster for reduced down time.
Existing Technical Environment:
Veeam University Hospital has VMware cluster in all locations. For security purposes, each cluster is dedicated to the department that it servers. No communication between cluster is possible. These cluster are broken into two categories, one hosting database workloads and the other hosting general use virtual machines.
Confidential patient data exists on several NAS systems as unstructured data. These NAS systems are only presenting backups to ensure consistency of the database.
Veeam University Hospital has an in-house patient database required a custom script to be execute before backups to ensure consistency of the database.
MSSQL and Oracle are used by most of the departments, with a mix of virtual and physical deployments.
Each site as a 10 GbE link to the public internet, and all traffic between sites is routed through these connections via VPN.
Each site has 20 vLANs in use, with 16 being used for VMware workloads.
For security and regulatory purposes, all vLANs are firewalled off from each other.
The current backups write to NFS storage.
All doctor and lab staff are assigned their laptops, which will also need to be protected. The location of data on these devices is enforced through group policy, and consistent throughout the organization.
No current disaster recovery solution, apart from restoring from backup files, exists at this time.
Business Requirements:
Any new solution must take advantage of automation and self-service functionality. Both features are needed to cut down on administrative costs. Role based access (RBAC) is mandatory. Forexample, only Oracle administrators can have the ability to perform self-service restore of Oracle Data.
Mission critical applications must not be impacted during business hours. All backups must complete between
6 p.m. and 8 a.m. local time.
To meet regulatory requirements all data must be retained for three years.
For archival purposes, 12 monthly backups and three yearly backups must be stored offsite.
Veeam University Hospital will only purchase on-premises storage to accommodate growth for three years of backup retention.
For any replicated virtual workloads, the data must not more than one hour old.
Due regulatory requirements, all protected data must be encrypted in flight and rest.
To meet customer service-level agreements, a commercially available helpdesk ticketing system is in use. All alerts generated must be integrated with this system to create support tickets.
Technical requirements:
Backups must take advantage of public cloud storage for long term archival purposes.
The solution must keep a local backup and be able to create an additional copy of production data. Both backups should reside on site with production systems being protected.
For quick restores and recovery, at least copy of protected data must reside on-premises.
Due to the threat of ransomware, at least one immutable or air gapped copy of protected data must reside off-side.
To ensure data integrity, backups must be verified and scanned for malware before any restore Is performed.
In addition to Self-service Oracle restores, native Oracle tools must be available and PowerShell script ready to perform ad-hoc backups and restores.
The backup solution must support VMware encrypted datastores.
Backups must be stored in logical scalable storage systems that can be expanded non-disruptively.
For end user laptop backups, only user data should be backed up. Operating system files should be excluded.
Personal files such as music, photos, and videos must be excluded for backup.

Explanation
The recommended storage option for the backups kept on-premises is a physical server with Veeam Hardened Repository. A Veeam 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 physical server is preferred over a virtual server for better performance, security, and scalability. A Veeam Hardened Repository meets the customer’s requirements for compliance, security, and retention, as well as supports all backup types and features.

Explanation
To design a disaster recovery solution that meets the needs and requirements of Veeam University Hospital, you need to identify some information during the discovery phase. This information will help you to understand the scope and scale of the replication and failover processes, the network andstorage resources and limitations, and the recovery time objectives and recovery point objectives.
According to the Veeam Backup & Replication Best Practice Guide, some of the information that is necessary to design the disaster recovery solution and must be identified during discovery are:
*The number of virtual machines to be replicated. This information will help you to determine the number and size of the replication jobs, as well as the replication performance and scalability, based on the number and type of virtual machines.
*The available bandwidth between locations. This information will help you to estimate the network bandwidth and throughput that are available for replication traffic, as well as the impact of replication activities on the network performance and latency.
*Which sites will be the source of replication and which sites will be the targets for recovery. This information will help you to plan and configure the replication infrastructure, such as the proxy servers, repository servers, WAN accelerators, and failover plans, based on the source and target locations.

Explanation
*The RMAN plugin is a component that integrates Veeam Backup & Replication with Oracle RMAN, which is a native tool for Oracle backup and recovery12.
*The RMAN plugin allows you to use Oracle RMAN commands to back up and restore Oracle databases to Veeam backup repositories, as well as perform log shipping and point-in-time recovery12.
*The RMAN plugin supports Oracle databases running on any supported operating system or hypervisor, as well as physical servers or cloud environments12.
*The RMAN plugin leverages the features and benefits of Veeam Backup & Replication, such as compression, deduplication, encryption, scalability, and reliability12.

Explanation
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]

Explanation
To perform backup from storage snapshots for a Fibre Channel SAN, you need to deploy one or more physical servers that will act as backup proxies and connect them to the SAN fabric. This is because Veeam Backup & Replication needs to access the storage system over the Fibre Channel protocol, which is not supported by virtual machines. The backup proxies will read data from the storage snapshots and transfer it to the backup repositories1

Explanation
Thank you for your question. I’m glad to help you with your VMCA 2022 project.
To design a solution that meets the database requirements for Veeam University Hospital, you need to consider some of the options and features that can support and integrate with Oracle databases. This will help you to ensure the consistency and reliability of the Oracle backups and restores, as well as the compatibility and supportability of the native Oracle tools with Veeam products and features.
According to the Veeam Backup & Replication Best Practice Guide, the option that most closely matches the requirements of having native Oracle utilities available for backups and restores is D. Install the Veeam RMAN Plug-in to allow native RMAN backups and restores to leverage Veeam repository directly from the Oracle servers.
This option means that:
*The Veeam RMAN Plug-in is a solution that integrates with Oracle Recovery Manager (RMAN) and allows you to back up and restore Oracle databases using Veeam repositories as targets.
*The Veeam RMAN Plug-in supports both virtual and physical Oracle servers, as well as different versions and editions of Oracle databases.
*The Veeam RMAN Plug-in enables you to use native Oracle tools and commands, such as RMAN, SQL*Plus, Data Pump, etc., to perform backups and restores of Oracle databases, without requiring any additional scripts or configurations.
*The Veeam RMAN Plug-in leverages the benefits and features of Veeam Backup & Replication, such as backup compression, deduplication, encryption, immutability, etc., to improve the backup performance and efficiency, as well as the backup security and integrity.
This option is the best match for the requirements, as it allows you to use native Oracle utilities for backups and restores, while also taking advantage of Veeam products and features.

Explanation
The retention requirement for gold tier virtual machines is that they must have 14 daily, eight weekly, three monthly and seven yearly backups. This requirement can be derived from the technical requirement of having eight weekly backups, three monthly backups, and seven yearly backups for regulatory purposes, as well as the business requirement of having daily backups for gold tier virtual machines.

Explanation
The component that can help meet the requirement of alternative decryption capabilities on encrypted backups in the event of lost passwords is Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager. Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager is a web-based interface that allows centralized management of multiple Veeam backup servers. It also provides a password loss protection feature that enables authorized users to restore encrypted backups without entering passwords if they forget or lose them. This feature requires enabling password loss protection in Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager settings and assigning a security officer role to a user who can approve password recovery requests.
References: [Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager], [Password Loss Protection]

Explanation
To design a solution that meets the backup retention requirements for Veeam University Hospital, you need to consider the minimum requirement for on-premises backup retention for this project. This will help you to ensure the availability and reliability of your backup data, as well as the compliance and security of your backup storage.
According to the case study, the minimum requirement for on-premises backup retention for this project is B.
On-premises retention must be 14 daily, and two weekly backups.
This requirement means that:
*The on-premises backup retention is the policy that defines how long the backup data should be kept on the local backup storage, such as NFS storage, deduplication appliance, etc.
*The on-premises backup retention must be 14 daily and two weekly backups, which means that you need to keep at least 14 copies of the daily backups and two copies of the weekly backups on the local backup storage.
*The on-premises backup retention must be applied to all types of workloads that are backed up by Veeam Backup & Replication, such as virtual machines, physical servers, NAS systems, etc.
This requirement is based on the business and compliance needs of Veeam University Hospital, which are:
*To have a fast and reliable restore option for the most recent backups in case of a disaster or failure.
*To comply with the HIPAA regulations that require health care organizations to retain backup data for at least six years1.

Explanation
The transport modes that could be used during the redesign for gold tier virtual machines with a one-hour RPO are Virtual Appliance (HotAdd) and Backup from Storage Snapshots. A transport mode is a method of retrieving VM data from the source storage during backup or replication. Virtual Appliance (HotAdd) is a transport mode that allows a proxy server running on a VM to attach disks of another VM to itself via hot-add SCSI commands and read data directly from these disks. Backup from Storage Snapshots is a transport mode that allows a proxy server to retrieve data from storage snapshots created by supported storage systems without affecting the production VMs or hosts. Both transport modes can improve backup performance, reduce backup window, and minimize impact on the production environment.