Setting Up Veeam Backup Architecture for a Clustered Environment

Running Veeam as a VM is doable, and many people do it, but just ensure it's not on the same storage as what you’re backing up, or you'll lose the backups if things go south. Remember that Veeam doesn't support Proxmox natively, so you'll be doing agent-based backups instead. For cloud, you don’t directly connect a NAS; instead, you create a repository within Veeam using cloud storage options like S3 or Azure, then configure a job to send backups there. Keep in mind the 3-2-1 rule: local backups, separate storage, and one offsite copy for better security.

It's generally a good idea to run your Veeam server on a physical machine or at least separate hardware, rather than as a VM on the same hosts you're backing up. This way, if something goes wrong with your virtual environment, you can still access your backups without needing to restore the Veeam server first. For cloud backups, you'll want to add a cloud repository in Veeam and set up backup jobs to send copies there, which it can handle for you.

We run Veeam on a dedicated Dell R740XD with local repositories and multiple offsite copy jobs with an air gap. If you want to implement a hardened repository, make sure your offsite storage is immutable and set a retention policy there. You might also want to look into using the Veeam hardened repository ISO to configure it properly.