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.

To protect Nutanix AHV resources with Veeam Backup & Replication, you must configure at least one worker. However, it is recommended to deploy multiple workers to increase the maximum number of concurrent backup and restore operations.

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.