Linux support in Veeam Backup & Replication

Andrew Zhelezko

Rustam Kovhaev

Veeam Technical Marketing Engineer

Veeam Tech Support Team Leader

Linux support in Veeam Backup & Replication

2© 2016 Veeam Software

ContentsIntroduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Linux as a backup repository . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

Linux VM backup in vSphere and Hyper-V environments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

File-level restore for Linux VMs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Linux support in Veeam Backup & Replication v9 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

Veeam Backup for Linux . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

About the Author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

About Veeam Software . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Linux support in Veeam Backup & Replication

3© 2016 Veeam Software

IntroductionThe Linux OS family found its way into the life of both end users and businesses around the world.

Corporate servers, cloud systems, routers, tablets, smartphones — many of these run on Linux. Linux is

installed on about 95% of the world's fastest supercomputers and about 60% of servers, demonstrating

its performance, flexibility, reliability and low total cost of ownership (TCO).

A recent survey concluded that the feature set (74%), security (69%) and lower TCO (69%) are the top

three reasons why people use Linux. The executive suite's view of Linux remains consistently positive,

with a steady 95% to 97% of executives viewing the platform as equally or more strategic to the

organization. This information highlights the importance of Linux for all kinds of organizations.

We began supporting Linux environments since the first version of our software at Veeam®, and the

situation has only improved since then. Currently Veeam Backup & Replication™ supports and uses

Linux operating systems extensively. Veeam can protect any Linux virtual machine (VM), and different

Veeam components use Linux as their operating systems. For example, the multi-OS file level recovery

procedure deploys a special file-level recovery (FLR) helper — that is a virtual appliance running a

stripped down Linux kernel that has a minimum set of components but all the needed modules to

restore data from every existing Linux and Unix file system.

In this white paper, I’m going to shed more light on the integration between Veeam Backup &

Replication and Linux. You’ll become familiar with the specifics of using Linux systems as a backup

repository for Veeam, and the specifics of running Linux as a guest OS in your VMware vSphere and

Microsoft Hyper-V VMs. I will also enlighten the enhancements for Linux that we’ve brought to the new

Veeam Backup & Replication v9, including Veeam Explorer™ for Oracle.

The intended audience for this white paper includes backup administrators and people who are familiar with

Veeam Backup & Replication and Linux systems and want to expand their knowledge about Veeam products.

Linux support in Veeam Backup & Replication

4© 2016 Veeam Software

Linux as a backup repositoryAny Linux server can be added to Veeam Backup & Replication as a backup repository.

The simple requirements are SSH and Perl available on the Linux system, something

that almost any Linux server has built-in.

NOTE: Please refer to the following knowledge base (KB) article for details: http://veeam.com/kb2007

When a Linux machine is added as a backup repository, Veeam Backup & Replication will leverage its

local or remote storage space to store backup files. Users can store data in proper local resources, like

a server with direct-attached storage (DAS) or with a local mount point using remote storage. Remote

resources can be block-based (iSCSI, FC) or NFS shares. Once mounted, resources appear as part of the

local file system in both cases, and you can use them as the root folder of the repository.

Veeam repository performance — whether the repository is on Windows or Linux — depends on the amount

of CPU and memory the server has available and the performance of the storage subsystem. When planning

for a new repository, users can test their servers in order to estimate the performance the device will have.

The most common utilities to perform network-related tasks are dd, fio and iPerf. At Veeam, we developed

a methodology to test any repository using fio, and we described how to use it effectively in the white paper

Veeam Backup & Replication v8: Designing and Planning Backup Repository Performance.

Veeam connects to a Linux repository using SSH. Once you have added the repository to your Veeam

infrastructure, the repository’s SSH public key fingerprint is saved to the Veeam database. This allows

the repository to be identified appropriately when it is connected. Veeam also supports public key

authentication, and private keys are also stored in the Veeam database.

When you need to execute an operation on the Linux repository, Veeam Backup & Replication uses a

local process to coordinate related activities there. These binaries are deployed into the repository using

the SSH connection and a series of Perl scripts to coordinate the processes. These components are

automatically deployed each time a new connection is established, and no permanent agent is left in

the repository. This can be also useful during upgrades, because there are no permanent components

that require updates. During the first connection after the upgrade, a new version of the binaries is

simply deployed and executed in the Linux repository.

Veeam Backup & Replication v8 Update 2 (or later) has a Veeam agent for pure 64-bit Linux systems

(those systems that have the CONFIG_IA32_EMULATION option disabled in the kernel).

Linux support in Veeam Backup & Replication

5© 2016 Veeam Software

Linux VM backup in vSphere and Hyper-V environmentsVeeam Backup & Replication supports backup of any Microsoft Hyper-V and VMware vSphere VM,

regardless of the VM’s guest OS. Because Veeam Backup & Replication processes VMs on an image-based

level, it doesn’t matter what’s inside the VM as long as the OS is supported by the respective hypervisor.

In addition, Veeam can create a transaction-consistent backup copy of a VM for both Windows and

Linux when you meet the following requirements:

• For vSphere: Make sure to install VMware tools or VMware Open-VM-Tools (i.e., the open source

version available in many of the popular modern Linux distributions). In addition, you’ll need to

enable VMware Tools Quiescence when possible.

• For Hyper-V: Make sure to install Linux Integration services, which are already included in the kernel

of most modern Linux distributions. For more details, please refer to the following article:

https://technet.microsoft.com/library/dn531030.aspx.

In Hyper-V, Linux integration consists of two parts: kernel modules and userspace daemons. Both

are included in the mainline kernel. Userspace daemons are in src/linux/tools/hv (hv_vss_daemon.c,

hv_kvp_daemon.c and others) and kernel modules are in src/linux/drivers/hv (hv_kvp.c, hv_util.c,

vmbus_drv.c and others).

However, integration with the hypervisor alone won’t guarantee your backup consistency of the

Linux Guest OS, or even its hosted applications. You may want to use custom pre-freeze and post-

thaw scripts, especially if you have applications that always perform writes to the local virtual disk. A

Veeam backup job can use pre-freeze and post-thaw scripts. You can launch scripts via SSH (vSphere

and Hyper-V) or via VIX (vSphere only), particularly useful in segregated networks where the Veeam

server cannot reach every virtual machine via the TCP/IP stack.

Finally, Veeam Backup & Replication supports Linux VM guest indexing whenever the Linux

mlocate utility is deployed on a VM.

Linux support in Veeam Backup & Replication

6© 2016 Veeam Software

File-level restore for Linux VMsIt’s possible to restore a Linux VM using different options, such as a full VM restore or an individual file

restore. When restoring individual files or folders, Veeam can preserve the original permissions and date

modification options. Linux ACL is preserved when restoring a file via Restore and Copy To operations

with Veeam Backup & Replication 8.0 Update 2 and later.

This requires that both backed up and destination VM runs Linux with kernel version 2.6 or later.

The technology used to do file-level restores is called multi-OS file-level recovery.

It allows you to read and restore data from a total of 19 different Microsoft, Linux, Mac, Novell and

Solaris file systems:

• Microsoft Windows FAT, FAT32, NTFS

• Linux ext2, ext3, ext4, ReiserFS, JFS, XFS, Btrfs, UFS, UFS2

• Mac HFS, HFS+

• Novell NSS

• Solaris UFS, ZFS (except pool versions of Oracle Solaris)

Veeam also supports partitions created with logical volume managers like Linux LVM (Logical Volume

Manager) and Windows LDM (Logical Disk Manager).

To restore files from a VM guest OS, Veeam Backup & Replication uses its patent-pending approach

based on the use of a special FLR helper. The appliance is rather small (42 MB on disk), and requires only

1 GB of RAM. Because of this, it takes only 10 seconds to boot, so restores can be started immediately.

The FLR helper appliance is created directly on the selected Hyper-V or ESXi host. Whenever you

perform a file-level restore, Veeam Backup & Replication starts the appliance automatically and mounts

the VM disks to the FLR appliance as additional virtual hard drives. VM disks are mounted directly from

backup files, without prior extraction of the backup content.

Once the mount process is completed, the wizard displays the file browser window, providing you with

a complete view to the VM file system. You can then copy the necessary files and folders to your local

machine drive or save them anywhere on the network. Alternatively, you can allow users to restore files

on their own by enabling an FTP server on the virtual appliance. For more details, please refer to the

following KB article: https://www.veeam.com/kb2062.

Linux support in Veeam Backup & Replication

7© 2016 Veeam Software

The figure below shows the file-level recovery process of a Linux VM:

Figure 1. File-level restore of a Linux VM; Veeam file browser

You can also access the Veeam Linux proxy appliance and connect as a root administrator, as seen in

this KB: https://www.veeam.com/kb1447.

Linux support in Veeam Backup & Replication

8© 2016 Veeam Software

Linux support in Veeam Backup & Replication v9Veeam Backup & Replication v9 introduces even more features related to Linux systems.

Version 9 supports new SSH encryption ciphers and key exchange algorithms. The full list of ciphers

and algorithms can be found here: https://sshnet.codeplex.com/.

Note: With Veeam Backup & Replication v9, the following knowledge base article is no longer valid:

https://www.veeam.com/kb2061.

Veeam Backup & Replication v9 also has a new mechanism for working with Oracle databases that

run on either Windows or Linux, and it’s designed to collect Oracle transaction logs (archive logs) used

for Veeam Explorer for Oracle. Veeam deploys and executes a temporary binary on the VM during the

backup process and removes it once the backup is finished. This component helps collect information

related to Oracle databases, including placement, configuration, data files, etc.

Veeam binary for Oracle interacts with OCI — Oracle’s API for third-party applications — to collect this

information. By using native Oracle tools, the interaction is completely supported by Oracle. Veeam

Backup & Replication v9 has a special job setting for Oracle to collect only archived transaction logs,

which is similar to the support for Microsoft SQL Server. The procedure of transaction logs collection

also requires a temporary binary on a VM and the steps are the same as described above.

Veeam Backup for LinuxVeeam has announced a new product, Veeam Backup for Linux, with GA planned in 2016. This will

perform backups of Linux systems regardless of their nature, either VMs or physical servers.

See more information at: http://go.veeam.com/linux.

Conclusion We’ve reviewed Veeam Backup & Replication integration with Linux systems in different scenarios. This

knowledge is important for a deep understanding of processes and better infrastructure management.

It also helps backup administrators use Linux-based backup repositories in the Veeam environment and

provides steps to ensure transaction-consistent backups for Linux VMs that run on Microsoft Hyper-V

and VMware vSphere.

I hope you learned several ways to restore an entire Linux VM and its guest files with full confidence, as

well as how to use Veeam Explorer for Oracle for transaction-level recovery of Oracle databases.

Linux support in Veeam Backup & Replication

9© 2016 Veeam Software

Rustam Kovhaev is a Tech Support Team Leader at Veeam Software. Rustam’s

main interest is low-level programming on Unix-like systems. Rustam loves to

contribute to open-source projects (ppp daemon, Linux kernel). His main areas

of expertise are VMware/Hyper-V virtualization and Veeam Backup & Replication

software. Follow Rustam on Twitter

Andrew Zhelezko is a Veeam Technical Marketing Engineer and a certified

IT Professional with years of experience in the Virtualization world. He gained

a strong understanding of Veeam products by working initially in Veeam

technical support.

This practical experience has helped him speak the same language as Veeam

community members. His goal is to help others realize the beauty and power of

virtualization. Talk to Andrew at SpiceWorks.

About Veeam Software Veeam® recognizes the new challenges companies across the globe face in enabling the Always-

On Business™, a business that must operate 24/7/365. To address this, Veeam has pioneered a

new market of Availability for the Always-On Enterprise™ by helping organizations meet recovery

time and point objectives (RTPO™) of less than 15 minutes for all applications and data, through

a fundamentally new kind of solution that delivers high-speed recovery, data loss avoidance,

verified protection, leveraged data and complete visibility. Veeam Availability Suite™, which

includes Veeam Backup & Replication™, leverages virtualization, storage, and cloud technologies

that enable the modern data center to help organizations save time, mitigate risks, and

dramatically reduce capital and operational costs.

Founded in 2006, Veeam currently has 37,000 ProPartners and more than 183,000 customers

worldwide. Veeam's global headquarters are located in Baar, Switzerland, and the company has

offices throughout the world. To learn more, visit http://www.veeam.com.

About the Author

Linux support in Veeam Backup & Replication

10© 2016 Veeam Software

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