CDP Infrastructure in Veeam Cloud Connect
The following CDP infrastructure components are required in the Veeam Cloud Connect environment.
Components on the SP side
- SP Veeam backup server
- One or more hardware plans whose resources will be available to tenants as cloud hosts
Alternatively, if the SP uses VMware Cloud Director in their virtualization environment, they can provide cloud hosts to tenants through organization VDCs.
Components on the tenant side
Note |
This section contains overview of CDP infrastructure components in the Veeam Cloud Connect environment. To get a detailed description of each component, see the Backup Infrastructure for CDP section in the Veeam Backup & Replication User Guide. |
The backup server is the configuration, administration and management core of the backup infrastructure. The SP and tenant backup servers run the Veeam CDP Coordinator Service:
- The SP backup server runs the source Veeam CDP Coordinator Service.
- The tenant backup server runs the target Veeam CDP Coordinator Service.
The source and target Veeam CDP Coordinator Service communicate with each other through a persistent connection to coordinate replication and data transfer tasks, and control resource allocation.
The source host is located on the tenant side and contains production VMs for which the tenant wants to create CDP replicas offsite. The source host must be a part of a VMware vSphere cluster managed by vCenter Server. vCenter Server must be connected to the tenant backup server.
To be able to use the source host for CDP, the tenant must install the I/O filter on the VMware vSphere cluster. To learn more, see I/O Filters.
Tenant VM data from the source host is moved to the cloud host located in the SP Veeam Cloud Connect infrastructure.
The target host in the Veeam Cloud Connect environment is represented by the cloud host. The cloud host is located on the SP side and contains CDP replicas of tenant VMs. The SP can provide tenants with cloud hosts of the following types:
- Cloud host that uses resources of a VMware vSphere cluster. To provide the tenant with a cloud host of this type, the SP must create a hardware plan. The process of allocating resources for CDP replicas does not differ from the same process for snapshot-based replicas. To learn more, see Hardware Plan.
- Cloud host that uses VMware Cloud Director resources. To provide the tenant with a cloud host of this type, the SP must configure an organization VDC in VMware Cloud Director and grant the tenant access to the VDC through a VMware Cloud Director tenant account. This process does not differ from the same process for snapshot-based replicas. To learn more, see Getting Started with Replication to VMware Cloud Director.
To be able to use the target host for CDP, the SP must install the I/O filter on the VMware vSphere cluster or VMware Cloud Director organization VDC. To learn more, see I/O Filters.
To be able to use hosts for CDP, the SP and tenant must install I/O filters on the source and target hosts.
- On the SP side, the I/O filter must be installed on the VMware vSphere cluster or VMware Cloud Director organization VDC where replication resources for the tenant are allocated. The installation procedure does not differ from the one in the regular CDP infrastructure. To learn more, see the Installing I/O Filter and Installing I/O Filter on VDCs sections in the Veeam Backup & Replication User Guide.
After the SP installs the I/O filter on the cluster, Veeam Backup & Replication automatically installs the filter on all hosts added to the cluster. Likewise, after the SP installs the I/O filter on the organization VDC, Veeam Backup & Replication automatically installs the filter on all clusters and hosts that provide resources to this VDC.
Note |
If you add a new organization VDC to the Cloud Director server after the I/O filter is installed on the existing VDCs, you must do the following:
Once the SP completes these steps, the tenant can rescan the SP in the tenant Veeam backup console and start using the newly added VDC as a cloud host. |
- On the tenant side, the I/O filter must be installed on the VMware vSphere cluster where VMs they plan to replicate reside. For details on how to install the filter, see the Installing I/O Filter section in the Veeam Backup & Replication User Guide.
After the tenant installs the I/O filter on the cluster, Veeam Backup & Replication automatically installs the filter on all hosts added to the cluster.
I/O filters are built on the basis of vSphere API for I/O filtering (VAIO) and perform the following operations:
- Read and process I/O operations in transit between the protected VMs and VM replicas, and their underlying datastores.
- Send and receive data to and from VMware CDP proxies.
- Communicate with the Veeam CDP Coordinator Service on the backup server and notify the service that the backup infrastructure must be reconfigured if any proxy becomes unavailable.
Source and Target VMware CDP Proxies
A VMware CDP proxy is a component that operates as a data mover and transfers data between the source and target hosts. We recommend you to configure at least two VMware CDP proxies: one (source proxy) in the production environment on the tenant side and one (target proxy) in the disaster recovery site on the SP side.
The source and target VMware CDP proxies perform the following tasks:
- The source proxy prepares data for short-term restore points from data received from the source host, compresses and encrypts the data (if encryption is enabled in the network traffic rules). Then sends it to the target proxy.
- The target proxy receives the data, decompresses and decrypts it, and then sends it to the target host.
For more information on VMware CDP proxies, their requirements, limitations and deployment, see the VMware CDP Proxies section in the Veeam Backup & Replication User Guide.
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