Managing Workers

To perform most data protection and disaster recovery operations (such as creating image-level backups and restoring backed-up data from them), Veeam Backup & Replication uses workers. Workers are Linux-based VMs that process backup workload and distribute backup traffic when transferring data to backup repositories.

Each worker is launched on a specific host for the duration of a backup or restore operation. While configuring the worker, you can manually select the host or instruct Veeam Backup & Replication to choose a host automatically. Manual selection may be helpful if you want to avoid launching workers on specific hosts (for example, production ones), while automatic selection allows Veeam Backup & Replication to optimize data transfer and to balance the load on the hosts in the Nutanix AHV cluster. In the latter case, Veeam Backup & Replication uses the AHV affinity functionality to distribute workers among all hosts in the cluster instead of launching multiple workers on one host.

Worker Lifecycle

When you add a worker to the backup infrastructure, its configuration is saved to the Veeam Backup & Replication configuration database, but no VM is actually deployed in the cluster unless you choose to test the configuration. In the latter case, a VM (worker VM) is deployed and shut down after the test operation completes.

As soon as a backup or restore session starts, Veeam Backup & Replication tries to launch the worker and test its configuration. If no worker VM has been previously deployed, Veeam Backup & Replication deploys the VM using the worker configuration saved to the configuration database. Veeam Backup & Replication checks host affinity settings specified for the worker and chooses a host where the worker VM will run. Then, Veeam Backup & Replication powers on the worker VM and installs system updates (if available). When the backup or restore session completes, Veeam Backup & Replication shuts down the worker VM so that it can be used for other sessions later.

During the lifecycle, a worker can obtain one of the following statuses:

• Configured — the worker configuration is added to the Veeam Backup & Replication configuration database.
• Testing — the worker configuration is being tested.
• Updating — the worker or its configuration is being updated.
• Working — the worker is processing a backup or restore operation.
• Shut Down — the worker is powered off.

In This Section

• Managing Workers Using Console
• Managing Workers Using Web UI