Workers

Workers are auxiliary Linux-based machines deployed by Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure for the scaling purposes and transfer fee reduction. Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure deploys workers in accordance with a worker configuration that can be created either:

• Automatically by the controller server when you perform backup or restore to/from backup repositories.

Such an automatic configuration is considered a default worker configuration that is created per Azure region by Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure. A default worker configuration consists of maximum 5 and minimum 1 pre-deployed worker.

• Manually by the user, as described in Adding Worker Configuration.

In general, a worker configuration can be considered a blueprint that defines a model according to which Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure deploys new workers; it defines the number of maximum and minimum worker instances that can run concurrently, a virtual network, a security group and a VM size.

Regardless of whether a worker configuration was created automatically or manually, Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure always deploys new workers to the resource group in which its host VM resides. The region to which Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure deploys new workers depends on the location of the target Azure storage account.

Consider the following about workers:

• Each worker can process data of only one VM at a time. That said, if your backup policy contains 30 VMs, Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure can deploy up to 30 additional workers; each worker will be responsible for processing data of a single VM.

When using a default worker configuration which, by default, can have only up to 5 workers that can run concurrently, processing of only 5 VMs at a time is possible; other VMs (if any) will be queued.

• Each worker has idle time (10 minutes) and after this time expires, Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure automatically removes such a worker from the resource group.

• Each worker has the following services that are installed by the controller server:

• Worker service

This service is responsible for fetching data from Azure.

• File-level recovery service

This service is responsible for mounting data from a backup to the worker when using a file-level recovery. For more information, see File-Level Recovery.

• Each worker has the Veeam VM Backup API that is responsible for saving backups to backup repositories in the native Veeam format. You can import backups created by Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure into the Veeam Backup & Replication console as external repositories. For more information, see the External Repository section of the Veeam Backup & Replication User Guide.

The Veeam VM Backup API also compresses and optionally encrypts data during a backup session. For more information, see How Backup Works.

In This Section

• Adding Worker Configuration
• Editing Worker Configuration
• Removing Worker Configuration
• Removing Workers
• Refreshing List of Workers
• Exporting Worker Records