Veeam Basics – Cloud Tier And v10

Posted on by

Disclaimer: I recently attended Veeam Vanguard Summit 2019.  My flights, accommodation, and some meals were paid for by Veeam. There is no requirement for me to blog about any of the content presented and I am not compensated by Veeam for my time at the event.  Some materials presented were discussed under NDA and don’t form part of my blog posts, but could influence future discussions.

Overview

Depending on how familiar you are with Veeam, you may already have heard of the Cloud Tier feature. This was new in Veeam Availability Suite 9.5 Update 4, and “is the built-in automatic tiering feature of Scale-out Backup Repository that offloads older backup files to more affordable storage, such as cloud or on-premises object storage”. The idea is you can use the cloud (or cloud-like on-premises storage resources) to make more effective (read: economical) use of your primary storage repositories. You can read more about Veeam’s object storage capabilities here.

 

v10 Enhancements

Move, Copy, Move and Copy

In 9.5 U4 the Move mode was introduced:

  • Policy allows chunks of data to be stripped out of a backup files
  • Metadata remains locally on the performance tier
  • Data moved and offloaded into capacity tier
  • Capacity Tier backed by an object storage repository

The idea was that your performance tier provided the landing zone for backup data, and the capacity tier was an object storage repository that data was moved to. Rhys does a nice job of covering Cloud Tier here.

Copy + Move

In v10, you’ll be able to do both copy and move activities on older backup data. Here are some things to note about copy mode:

  • Still uses the same mechanics as Move
  • Data is chunked and offloaded to the Capacity Tier
  • Unlike Move we don’t dehydrate VBK / VIB / VRB
  • Like Move this ensures that all restore functionality is retained
  • Still makes use of the Archive Index and similar to Move
  • Will not duplicate blocks being offloaded from the Performance Tier
  • Both Copy + Move is fully supported
  • Copy + Move will share block data between them

[image courtesy of Veeam]

With Copy and Move the Capacity Tier will contain a copy of every backup file that has been created as well as offloaded data from the Performance Tier. Anthony does a great job of covering off the Cloud Tier Copy feature in more depth here.

Immutability

One of the features I’m really excited about (because I’m into some weird stuff) is the Cloud Tier Immutability feature.

  • Guarantees additional protection for data stored in Object storage
  • Protects against malicious users and accidental deletion (ITP Theory)
  • Applies to data offloaded to capacity tier for Move or Copy
  • Protects the most recent (more important) backup points
  • Beware of increased storage consumption and S3 costs

 

Thoughts and Further Reading

The idea of moving protection data to a cheaper storage repository isn’t a new one. Fifteen years ago we were excited to be enjoying backup to disk as a new way of doing data protection. Sure, it wasn’t (still isn’t) as cheap as tape, but it was a lot more flexible and performance oriented. Unfortunately, the problem with disk-based backup systems is that you need a lot of disk to keep up with the protection requirements of primary storage systems. And then you probably want to keep many, many copies of this data for a long time. Deduplication and compression helps with this problem, but it’s not magic. Hence the requirement to move protection data to lower tiers of storage.

Veeam may have been a little late to market with this feature, but their implementation in 9.5 U4 is rock solid. It’s the kind of thing we’ve come to expect from them. With v10 the addition of the Copy mode, and the Immutability feature in Cloud Tier, should give people cause to be excited. Immutability is a really handy feature, and provides the kind of security that people should be focused on when looking to pump data into the cloud.

I still have some issues with people using protection data as an “archive” – that’s not what it is. Rather, this is a copy of protection data that’s being kept for a long time. It keeps auditors happy. And fits nicely with people’s idea of what archives are. Putting my weird ideas about archives versus protection data aside, the main reason you’d want to move or copy data to a cheaper tier of disk is to save money. And that’s not a bad thing, particularly if you’re working with enterprise protection policies that don’t necessarily make sense (e.g. keeping all backup data for seven years). I’m looking forward to v10 coming soon, and taking these features for a spin.