Pass the Veeam Certified Architect 2022 VMCA2022 Questions and answers with ValidTests

To design a solution that meets the needs and requirements of Veeam University Hospital, you need to collect some critical information during the discovery phase. This information will help you to understand the current state of the environment, the goals and expectations of the stakeholders, and the constraints and challenges of the project.

According to the case study, some of the critical information that was missing from discovery are:

•Size of current data sets. This information is critical because it helps you to estimate the backup storage requirements, as well as the backup performance and efficiency, based on the size and type of data. You need to know how much data is stored on each workload, such as virtual machines, physical servers, NAS systems, etc., as well as how much data is changed or added on a daily or weekly basis.

•Backup retention policy. This information is critical because it helps you to define the backup retention settings and policies, such as the number and frequency of backup copies, the backup storage tiers, the backup deletion rules, etc. You need to know how long the backup data should be kept for compliance or historical purposes, as well as how much backup storage capacity is available or needed.

•Use Hardened Repositories as the primary target, which are Linux-based repositories that support immutability and prevent ransomware from accessing or deleting backup files12.

•Use backup copy jobs to create a second copy of the backups to a different site, which will provide additional protection and redundancy in case of a disaster or data loss34.

•Use Veeam Backup & Replication servers at one location, which will simplify the management and monitoring of the backup infrastructure and reduce the operational costs.

The other configurations are not as effective or secure, as they either do not use immutability, do not create a second copy of the backups, or do not leverage the benefits of Veeam Backup & Replication servers.

References: 1: Protect against Ransomware with Immutable Backups - Veeam 2: Hardened Repository - User Guide for VMware vSphere 3: Backup Copy Modes - User Guide for VMware vSphere 4: Backup copy jobs - Veeam Backup & Replication Best Practice Guide : Veeam Backup & Replication Architecture Overview

According to the Veeam Backup & Replication Best Practice Guide1, one of the possible ramifications of shortening the backup window to eight hours is that the CPU and memory requirements of the proxies will be increased. This is because:

•The proxies are responsible for retrieving data from the source and sending it to the target. They perform data compression, deduplication, encryption, and other tasks that consume CPU and memory resources.

•To shorten the backup window, the proxies need to process more data in less time, which means they need more CPU cores and memory to handle concurrent tasks and avoid bottlenecks.

•The backup window can also be affected by other factors, such as the network bandwidth, the storage throughput, the backup methods, and the backup settings. Therefore, it is important to consider all these aspects when designing a backup solution.

References: 1: Proxy - Veeam Backup & Replication Best Practice Guide

According to the Veeam Backup & Replication Best Practice Guide1, the proxy and repository servers are the components that should be sized correctly to ensure that synthetic operations and backup copy jobs can be completed in the desired window. This is because:

•The proxy server is responsible for retrieving data from the source and sending it to the target. The proxy server performance depends on the CPU, memory, network, and storage resources available. The proxy server should have enough CPU cores and memory to handle concurrent tasks, as well as sufficient network bandwidth and storage throughput to transfer data efficiently.

•The repository server is responsible for storing backup files on the target storage. The repository server performance depends on the CPU, memory, network, and storage resources available. The repository server should have enough CPU cores and memory to handle concurrent tasks, as well as sufficient network bandwidth and storage throughput to write data efficiently. The repository server should also support the backup format and retention policy chosen for the backup copy job.

References: 1: Backup copy jobs - Veeam Backup & Replication Best Practice Guide

If using Veeam’s native encryption, the repository type that will be impacted the most is the deduplicating storage appliance. This is because Veeam Backup & Replication uses different encryption keys for every job session, which makes the encrypted data blocks appear as different even if they contain duplicate data. This reduces the deduplication ratio and increases the storage consumption on the deduplicating appliance. If you want to achieve a higher deduplication ratio, youcan disable data encryption or use the encryption feature on the deduplicating appliance itself1

To design a solution that meets the NAS environment requirements for Veeam University Hospital, you need to collect some information during the discovery phase. This information will help you to understand the characteristics and performance of the NAS systems, the size and type of the data, and the backup and recovery objectives.

According to the Veeam Backup & Replication Best Practice Guide, some of the information that you should collect from the customer about the data stored on the NAS per site are:

•Total number of files (in millions) to be backed up. This information will help you to estimate the backup storage requirements, as well as the backup performance and scalability, based on the number and distribution of files.

•Largest file size. This information will help you to determine the optimal backup block size and alignment, as well as the backup compression and deduplication ratios, based on the size and type of files.

To design a solution that meets the requirements for off-site immutable backups for Veeam University Hospital, you need to consider some of the options and features that Veeam products and features offer. This will help you to ensure the security and integrity of your backup data, as well as the compatibility and supportability of the cloud provider that does not currently support immutability.

According to the Veeam Backup & Replication Best Practice Guide, immutability is a feature that prevents backup files from being deleted or modified by anyone until the specified retention period expires. Immutability can be achieved by using S3 Object Lock or Hardened Repository, which are two different solutions that Veeam Backup & Replication supports.

Based on this definition, the best option to still satisfy the requirements for off-site immutable backups is A. Backup copy to a hardened repository.

This option means that:

•The backup copy is a type of job that allows you to create and maintain copies of your backup data on a secondary backup repository. You can use backup copy jobs to send your backup data off-site, as well as to apply different retention settings and policies.

•The hardened repository is a solution that allows you to add a hardened repository based on a Linux server to your backup infrastructure. You can use hardened repository with Veeam Backup & Replication to make your backups immutable on-premises or off-site.

•The backup copy to a hardened repository can be configured and managed by Veeam Backup & Replication, regardless of the cloud provider that does not currently support immutability. You only need to deploy and connect a Linux server with a hardened repository in the cloud environment, and then use it as a target for your backup copy jobs.

To design a disaster recovery solution that meets the needs and requirements of Veeam University Hospital, you need to identify some information during the discovery phase. This information will help you to understand the scope and scale of the replication and failover processes, the network andstorage resources and limitations, and the recovery time objectives and recovery point objectives.

According to the Veeam Backup & Replication Best Practice Guide, some of the information that is necessary to design the disaster recovery solution and must be identified during discovery are:

•The number of virtual machines to be replicated. This information will help you to determine the number and size of the replication jobs, as well as the replication performance and scalability, based on the number and type of virtual machines.

•The available bandwidth between locations. This information will help you to estimate the network bandwidth and throughput that are available for replication traffic, as well as the impact of replication activities on the network performance and latency.

•Which sites will be the source of replication and which sites will be the targets for recovery. This information will help you to plan and configure the replication infrastructure, such as the proxy servers, repository servers, WAN accelerators, and failover plans, based on the source and target locations.

•Backup copy jobs with GFS enabled. This type of job does not support using immutability from S3 Object Lock because it uses synthetic full backups, which require modifying existing backup files. Synthetic full backups are not compatible with immutability settings, as they violate the principle of not changing the backup files.

•Use Linux repositories as the performance tier, which are more secure and resilient than Windows repositories, as they support immutable backups and prevent ransomware from accessing or deleting backup files1.

•Use immutable cloud storage as the capacity tier, which will offload older backup files to a public cloud object storage that supports immutability, such as Amazon S3 Object Lock or Azure Blob Storage with immutable policies2. This will ensure that the backup files cannot be modified or deleted by ransomware or malicious users for a specified period of time.

•Use Scale-out Backup Repository, which is a logical entity that groups several backup repositories into a single pool of storage, allowing for better backup performance, scalability, and management3.

References: 1: Protect against Ransomware with Immutable Backups - Veeam 2: Ransomware Protection: Learn How Veeam Can Protect Your Data 3: Scale-Out Backup Repository - Veeam Backup & Replication Best Practice Guide