Install and Configure Veeam Backup and Availability Suite

We should install a fresh copy of Server 2012 R2 - making sure we have separate the backup disk(s) and the system disk (e.g. C:\ and D:\). Dependent on our disk options we will proberly want to enable data de-duplication on our backup disk - so we go to:

Server Manager >> Add Roles and Features >> File and Storage Services >> File and iSCSI Services >> Data-deduplication

We should then setup the data-deduplication on our backup drive (D:\ in this case.):

Enable-DedupVolume D: -UsageType Default

We should proceed by installing Veeam (VeeamAvailabilitySuite.8.0.0.11) and also specifying our (trial) licensing key (veeam_availability_suite_trial_32_32.lic).

Once installed we should proceed by adding a new "Managed Server" - in our case ESXI host - but before we add this server we must enable SSH on our ESXI host. In order to do this we should go to:

Inventory >> Host and Clusters >> ESXI Host >> Configuration >> Software >> Security Profile >> Services << Properties >> SSH >> Options >> Start with host. (Make you sure manually start it as well!)

We should now add our vSphere or vCenter host: Managed Servers >> VMware vSphere and enter the relevent details (web services login, ssh login etc.)

We will now add a backup repository: Backup Infrastructure >> Right-hand click Backup Repositories >> Add Backup Repository.

We can then create a quick backup job by gonig to: Backup and Replication >> Right-hand click jobs >> Backup... and select one of our VMs on our ESXI host.