Backup NetApp with archive

[jeroenburen]

Hi,

We have integrated a NetApp filer into our Backup environment. This NetApp uses Komprise to archive old files to cloud storage. In the backup jobs, Veeam copies the complete file out of the archive instead of the stub file stored on the NetApp. Because of this, the size of the backup jobs is much greater than anticipated.
Can we configure Veeam to only backup the Stub file and not the archived data?

We created case 07516603 for this but we got a reply that it is not possible. Really? This is killing our business case...

[Andreas Neufert]

I asked the specific PM team if they have some insights on how we could detect what was tierd.
NetApp documentation FAQ says:

Is all the tiered data retrieved from object storage when I do a full backup?
During full backup all the cold data is read. The retrieval of the data depends on the tiering policy used. When using the All and Cold User Data and Snapshots policies, the cold data is not written back to the performance tier. When using the Cold Snapshots policy, only in case of an old snapshot being used for the backup will its cold blocks be retrieved.

https://docs.netapp.com/us-en/bluexp-ti ... ering.html

If I remember right from previous discussions then the NetApp Cloud Archive process is transparent to the user and they do not alter the file metadata itself to reflect the Cloud Tier offloading. Please check how it looks like in your environment as there might be different configurations and different setups. Can you please check on the archived files if they have any special flag set that we could detect on the file properties? Or do you even see that the "size on disk" is 4KB or smaller?

[jeroenburen]

If I look at an archived file on the Windows side of it, I see that the size is 8.84 MB and the size on disk is 12 KB. When I look in the Backup Browser of the job, the size is 8.8 MB. I'm not sure if this is related to the tiering or not but an archived file has Attribute "O" and a non-archived file "N". I think that stands for Offline and Normal.
For the tiering policies I have to ask a colleague.

[Andreas Neufert]

Would be good to understand the exact product feature and configuration you use for our own testing then.
Let me check with our team if there is a way to backup file with the "O" attribute only as stub.

[Andreas Neufert]

I got notification from responsible PM. There is no mode that backs up offline files differently. In the end we expect that customers want to backup all their data and not only the "active" data.

Feature request is noted and it is a prominent one as we got lately multiple feedbacks.

[jeroenburen]

Thanks for asking around and I hope this is possible in the near future.

[Dima P.]

Hello Jeroen,

Thank you for your feedback! Unfortunately it's not possible to backup the archived data as stub files today as NAS backup engine aggregates all the data to the backup for further restores. I'll add your vote to the feature request to exclude the archived content!

[314ter]

Adding to this thread.
I have the same issue with a different archiving (HSM) solution. (DataCore FileFly) Here the archiving application also uses the NetApp Fpolicy Engine for migration. After migrating files off a NetApp smb share to s3 storage, the NetApp fpolicy engine leaves a stub at the original location. This "stub" is used to recall the file back from the archive location to the original location when it is accessed. As with the OP these stubs cause problems when backing up through veeam. During Nas backup (Share and using the NetApp storage integration) the stubs are not backed up, it causes a recall from the archive. (This is not what you want, you do not want/ need the archived content backed up, you want to have it skipped).

On a Windows Fileserver veeam handles stubs well. These stubs are called NTFS Reparse points. The stub file has the L (Reparse) and O (Offline) attribute set. When doing a Windows Fileserver backup these reparse points are, by default, skipped. No setting needed. This is the correct way to handle stubs. I assume this is because of the "L" attribute of the reparse point. The NetApp Fpolicy stub is a sparse file that only has the SMB offline bit set (O). Not the (L) attribute. It will be great to have this feature as well for the NetApp backup.