VMCE_v12 Practice Exam Questions with Answers Veeam Certified Engineer v12 Certification

To ensure VMs running interdependent applications fail over one by one, as a group, the method to use is D: Failover plan. In Veeam Backup & Replication, a failover plan allows for the orchestration of a group of replicas to fail over in a predefined sequence. This includes the capability to set up delays between starting each VM, which is crucial for interdependent applications that must be started in a specific order to function correctly. The failover plan ensures that dependencies among the group are respected and that the startup sequence follows the correct order, enabling a smooth and organized transition to the failover state.

When implementing a backup copy strategy for unstructured data backups with additional retention, a File Share Copy job is the correct configuration. This type of job is designed to copy backups of file shares to a secondary location, which in this case would be the alternate site. It allows for the setting of additional retention days beyond the original backup retention policy.References:

• Veeam Backup & Replication User Guide: File Share Backup and Copy
• Veeam Knowledge Base: Configuring File Share Copy Jobs

By adding a capacity tier to the Scale-out Backup Repository and enabling the "Copy" option, the administrator can create a backup that automatically copies data to a different media type (object storage) and also ensures that the data is offsite. This is accomplished without creating additional backup or backup copy jobs. The "Copy" option allows for immediate copying of backups to the capacity tier, meeting the criteria specified.References:

• Veeam Backup & Replication User Guide: Scale-Out Backup Repository
• Veeam Help Center: Capacity Tier and Archive Tier Configuration

When moving the Veeam Backup & Replication server and its configuration database to new hardware or servers, the appropriate process to undertake is a configuration restore, denoted by option A: Restore. This process involves using the Veeam Backup & Replication Configuration Backup utility, which regularly backs up the configuration of the Veeam Backup & Replication server. In the event of a hardware migration or significant system change, this utility allows administrators to restore the server's configuration, including all settings, job configurations, and inventory, onto the new server setup. This ensures a seamless transition with minimal disruption to the backup operations and policies that were previously in place.

For GDPR compliance, Veeam provides the capability to add location tags to Scale-out Backup Repositories. Location tags in Veeam Backup & Replication are used to identify the location of data, which is essential for adhering to data sovereignty laws like GDPR. Location tagging helps ensure that data residency requirements are met by keeping data in a defined geographical area. In the context of GDPR, it's important to manage and control where personal data is stored and processed. Proxy servers, file copy jobs, and WAN accelerators do not have the functionality to be tagged for GDPR compliance in the same manner as repositories within Veeam Backup & Replication.

To enable backup from storage snapshots with a Nimble Array, it is necessary to add the storage system to the Veeam Backup & Replication console's Storage Infrastructure. This allows Veeam to interact with the Nimble Array and orchestrate the creation of storage snapshots, which can then be used for backups. Simply enabling the backup from storage snapshots option in the job is not enough; the array itself must be integrated into the Veeam infrastructure.References:

• Veeam Backup & Replication User Guide: Integration with Storage Systems
• Veeam Best Practices: Nimble Storage Snapshot Integration

Before creating a NAS backup job, an engineer must add the NAS file share to the Veeam Backup & Replication (VBR) console under the Inventory section. This involves specifying the NAS Filer and the particular file share to be protected. This step allows Veeam to recognize the file share as a valid source for backup operations.References:

• Veeam Backup & Replication User Guide: NAS Backup
• Veeam Help Center: Adding File Shares to Inventory

To meet the requirements of setting up a Scale-Out Backup Repository (SOBR) with immutability for malware protection and specific retention policies, the most fitting configuration is D: Copy and move mode with a Performance Tier configured on a Linux Hardened Repository using the XFS file system and immutability set for 21 days, and a Capacity Tier on Amazon S3 with immutability set for 60 days. This setup utilizes the copy and move mode to ensure that backups are first stored on the on-premises Linux Hardened Repository with an immutability setting that prevents modifications to backups, providing protection against malware for the most recent 21 days of backups. As this on-premises server has limited capacity, older backups beyond 21 days are moved to the Capacity Tier in Amazon S3, where they are also protected with immutability for the entire 60-day retention period. This configuration leverages the strengths of both on-premises and cloud storage while ensuring that all backups are protected from modification or deletion by immutability, aligning with the customer's malware protection concerns and retention requirements.

Given the proxy load of 68% and all other loads (source, network, target) at 0%, the bottleneck is at the proxy. To decrease the backup processing time and accommodate the growth of the environment, adding additional Windows or Linux machines as backup proxies would help distribute the load. This would enable parallel processing and reduce the time taken to complete the backup jobs, thereby helping to meet the RPOs.

References:

Veeam Backup & Replication User Guide: Backup Proxy

Veeam Help Center: Managing Backup Proxies

In a scenario where a Veeam engineer needs to manage backup file transfers between two sites without impacting bandwidth during business hours, the most appropriate feature to configure in the backup copy job is D: Backup Copy Window. The Backup Copy Window setting in Veeam Backup & Replication allows for specifying the time frame during which the backup copy job is allowed to transfer data. By configuring this window to exclude business hours, the engineer can ensure that the backup copy job transfers data only during off-peak hours, thereby avoiding additional strain on the WAN connection when it is most needed for business operations. This approach provides the flexibility to balance the need for offsite backups with the practical bandwidth considerations of a busy WAN connection, ensuring that backup activities do not interfere with critical business functions.

In Veeam Backup & Replication, if there are multiple unsuccessful attempts to enter a confirmation code for Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA), the system will lock the user account to prevent unauthorized access. Based on standard security practices, and while it may vary, a lockout for 24 hours after exceeding the maximum number of failed attempts is a common approach to protect against brute force attacks. Please note that specific lockout policies can vary by system configuration and the policies set by the system administrator. It's always best to consult the actual system settings or documentation for the precise behavior in a given environment.

To ensure that a group of VMs starts in a specific order with time delays during a disaster scenario, the solution is B: Create a failover plan. A failover plan in Veeam Backup & Replication is a feature designed to manage the startup sequence of VMs within a DR site. The failover plan can be customized to specify the order in which VMs should start and to include necessary delays between the startups of each VM. This is especially useful for multi-tier applications where the order of startup is essential for the application stack to become fully operational. By using a failover plan, companies can control the recovery process, ensuring that VMs are brought online in an orderly and coordinated fashion that respects their interdependencies.

Creating a backup job based on vSphere tags allows for dynamic addition of new VMware hosted SQL servers. When new VMs are tagged appropriately in vSphere, they are automatically included in the backup job, ensuring all relevant SQL servers are backed up without manual intervention.References: Veeam Backup & Replication User Guide, Veeam Dynamic Backup Job Configuration Guide

In Veeam ONE, the remaining capacity of each backup repository server can be viewed under the Data Protection View. This section provides detailed information about the storage utilization and remaining capacity of backup repositories, allowing administrators to effectively monitor and manage storage resources.References: Veeam ONE User Guide, Veeam ONE Data Protection View Documentation

Application-aware processing is a feature in Veeam Backup & Replication that creates transactionally consistent backup images of VMs. For domain controllers, this feature ensures that backups are consistent with the applications running on the VM, like Active Directory services. To avoid crash-consistent backups and ensure application consistency, the engineer must enable the Application-Aware Processing option during the job configuration.References:

• Veeam Backup & Replication User Guide: Application-Aware Processing
• Veeam Best Practices: Protecting Active Directory Domain Controllers

A planned failover is a process that allows for the seamless switching from the original VMs at Site A to their replicas at Site B with no data loss. This is the correct course of action when a power outage is expected, as it is a controlled process that ensures that all data is synchronized before the switch is made. This action minimizes data loss and ensures that the VMs on Site B are up-to-date.References:

• Veeam Backup & Replication User Guide: Failover and Failback
• Veeam Help Center: Planned Failover Procedure

Having at least one backup proxy server in each site when defining a replica job is recommended because the backup proxy servers are responsible for data processing and transfer. Having proxies in both sites enables a stable connection for VM data transfer across sites, as they handle the data compression, deduplication, and transfer processes. This setup ensures that data is efficiently moved from one site to another, thereby making replication more resilient and reliable. Proxies do not automatically restart replication after failure (A), remove the need for VM snapshots during transit (B and F), or enable automatic WAN acceleration (D), although they can work in conjunction with WAN accelerators if configured to do so. They also don't directly deduplicate data during transit across the WAN (C), although they do compress and optimize it for transfer.

When configuring Veeam Backup & Replication in a VMware vSAN environment, the best practice is to use the Virtual Appliance transport mode. This mode is also referred to as "hot-add" and allows the backup proxy to mount VM disks directly from the datastore. This method is more isolated from the VMkernel network traffic, as it does not require network connectivity to the hosts to retrieve data, thus providing a level of isolation that meets the requirement stated in the question. The Direct NFS and Direct SAN options are not applicable for vSAN, and Network mode would not provide the necessary isolation from VMkernel network traffic.

The primary benefit of configuring replica mapping in Veeam Backup & Replication is C: Reduced WAN traffic. Replica mapping is a feature that allows an administrator to map an existing VM in the disaster recovery site to a replica job. This is particularly useful when the initial replication of a large VM has been performed by other means (such as shipping a hard drive with the VM data to the DR site) or if a replica VM already exists and needs to be re-synced with the source VM. By using replica mapping, Veeam can avoid transferring the entire VM over the WAN again and instead only synchronize the differences between the source VM and the existing replica. This significantly reduces the amount of data that needs to be transferred over the WAN, conserving bandwidth and speeding up the replication process. It's an efficient way to manage replicas, especially for large VMs or in environments with limited bandwidth.

A SureBackup Job in Veeam Backup and Replication can be utilized to create a secure, isolated environment to test new applications. This feature allows companies to validate backups and run their VMs in an isolated environment, providing an opportunity to test applications, patches, or updates without impacting the production environment.References: Veeam Backup & Replication Documentation, Veeam SureBackup Guide

In Veeam Backup & Replication, to meet the business requirements of having both the database backup and transaction logs stored at a secondary location, a Backup Copy Job can be configured. The Backup Copy Job can be set to include both the VM backup and the transaction logs, ensuring that the database's recovery points are consistent and available at the DR site. The transaction logs backup every 30 minutes can be specified as the source for the Backup Copy Job, ensuring that the transaction log backups are also copied to the secondary repository.

Recovery Point Objective (RPO) refers to the maximum acceptable amount of data loss measured in time. It is essentially the age of the files that must be recovered from backup storage for normal operations to resume after a failure or disaster. In other words, it defines the data loss tolerance of a business unit or organization. If an RPO is set to one hour, the system must back up at least every hour to meet the RPO.References:

• Veeam Documentation: Recovery Point Objective (RPO)
• Veeam Backup & Replication User Guide: RPO and Recovery Time Objective (RTO) Definitions

Based on the configuration shown in the image, backups older than 21 days are moved to the capacity tier. Since the VMware backup job retention is set for 31 days and keeps weekly GFS full backups for 14 weeks, the backup from the week of January 1st is older than 21 days but within the 14-week GFS retention policy. Therefore, as of March 20, the backup data you need to recover would be in the capacity tier, not on the local performance tier, because it has been offloaded to the object storage configured as the capacity tier to reduce long-term retention costs.

References: Veeam Backup & Replication Documentation, Scale-Out Backup Repository Configuration Guide

In Veeam replication, the function that ensures changes made during a failover are copied back to the original production VM is Fallback. This process involves reversing the replication direction after a failover, ensuring that any changes made while running on the replica are synchronized back to the original VM.References: Veeam Backup & Replication User Guide, Veeam Replication Fallback Guide

Veeam Data Platform can achieve image-level backups for Solaris workloads. This means it can create a complete backup of the system at the image level, capturing the entire state of the Solaris system, including the operating system, applications, and data.References: Veeam Data Platform Documentation, Veeam Solaris Backup Guide

Within Veeam Backup & Replication, the functionality that achieves the lowest Recovery Point Objective (RPO) is B: Continuous Data Protection (CDP). CDP is designed to protect critical workloads by continuously capturing changes and replicating them to a target site, allowing for very low RPOs, often measured in seconds. This is achieved through the use of VMware's vSphere APIs for I/O Filtering (VAIO), which intercepts and replicates I/O streams almost in real-time. CDP is particularly valuable for applications that require high levels of availability and cannot tolerate significant data loss. By providing near-continuous replication, CDP ensures that in the event of a failure or disaster, data loss can be minimized to a very narrow window, significantly reducing the potential impact on business operations.

For backing up a 3-node Microsoft SQL Always On cluster running in a VMware environment with the specified Recovery Point Objectives (RPOs), the most suitable option is A: Veeam Backup and Replication - Create a VMware backup job, include the 3 nodes of the cluster. Use Application-Aware Processing to back up the transaction logs every 15 minutes. This approach allows for the entire SQL cluster nodes to be backed up as part of a regular VM backup job, which satisfies the 1-day RPO for the cluster nodes. The Application-Aware Processing feature of Veeam Backup & Replication ensures that the SQL databases are in a consistent state during backup. Moreover, this feature allows for the transaction logs to be backed up separately at a more frequent interval, in this case, every 15 minutes, meeting the 15-minute RPO requirement for the log files. This dual approach ensures comprehensive protection for both the SQL cluster nodes and the critical transaction logs, aligning with the specified RPOs.