Cannot Recover NAS Files from Archive

[torteflo]

Hello,

I am a service provider / Veeam partner.
I have a big concern for one of my end customers, about recovering from a Nas archive (Veeam Data Cloud Vault here).

Context :
- 1 VHR (veeam hardened repository), onpremise
- 1 Veeam Data Cloud Vault
We backup :
- VMware VMs (all is fine with the world here)
- a NetApp Nas filer
with :
- VMs jobs
and
- 1 job for NetAppFiler, with :
-- backup to the VHR retention 30 days
-- archive to the Vault (no move, copy immediately only), with same retention
So we should have (and I think we have) the same Nas data in onpremise repo and cloud repo.
Initially, I wanted to do a backup copy job for the Nas, instead of using archive, but, this is not possible with our Veeam licenses.
Which are... a mix of a sockets standard license for VMware, and a VUL (so, Enterprise +) license, for NAS workload. These both licenses, unified in the same Veeam server, make us being in Standard Edition mode only for all our workloads.... Sad !

I added NetApp Filer in Veeam as.. a Netapp Filer Sooo, I think it is the best way. It appears in Veeam Inventory in Unstructured Data.
And by the way why can't we browse that here in Veeam, but elsewhere yes, that is too sad (feature request?), but sorry, I walk away of my subject.


Is it possible to recover a file or folder from archive only, and not from the onprem repo please ?
because i can't find it.
I saw there is an issue/feature lacking/feature request already about rstoring multiple files from archive.
But me I did not even manage to restore 1, here.
Under File level Restore wizard for NAS, pushing the "All Time" button does not help, it will always offer to restore from the VHR only.
Maybe because we got the same files version at both. Idk.
Plus, if I shutdown the VHR, the File level restore Wizard for Nas does not even launch. Saying "failed to start file recovery: backup meta files are not synchronized with the DB. To resolve this, run repository rescan"
And a rescan on Data Cloud Vault did not help.
So, we could not restore archive when the onpremise repository is dead ? if so, archive seems a bit useless.

The whole thing for now is just to test this new Veeam backup infrastructure.
But, right now the end customer is pretty worried with this, and me too.
But I tell myself maybe I miss something. Or, is this all normal/expected, with the Nas archive feature ?

Thx in advance for your answers.

[torteflo]

Hello,

nobody wanting/knowing how to answer my topic, please ?
Did I make something wrong, maybe forum rules or something, topic already existing, support case creation mandatory, or something else like that ?
Kind Regards

[Dima P.]

Hello torteflo,

Sorry for the delay!

Initially, I wanted to do a backup copy job for the Nas, instead of using archive, but, this is not possible with our Veeam licenses. Which are... a mix of a sockets standard license for VMware, and a VUL (so, Enterprise +) license, for NAS workload. These both licenses, unified in the same Veeam server, make us being in Standard Edition mode only for all our workloads.... Sad !

Backup copy job is embedded into the unstructured data backup and does not require any additional licenses, if you can configure the backup job it should be possible to create a backup copy job too.

I added NetApp Filer in Veeam as.. a Netapp Filer Sooo, I think it is the best way. It appears in Veeam Inventory in Unstructured Data.
And by the way why can't we browse that here in Veeam, but elsewhere yes, that is too sad (feature request?), but sorry, I walk away of my subject.

Check the 'Files' node of Veeam B&R console, added Filers should be displayed there too.

Is it possible to recover a file or folder from archive only, and not from the onprem repo please ?

Yes, by starting a file level recovery. You need to switch the FLR mode to 'All-time' and it will display all the file versions stored in the archive. You need to select the file version in the archive (try olderst file version for example).

Under File level Restore wizard for NAS, pushing the "All Time" button does not help, it will always offer to restore from the VHR only. Maybe because we got the same files version at both. Idk.

Restore always goes from primary backup because it's faster. If you want to test it - you can remove the primary backup completely from the repository and keep only the archive. Rescan the archive repo after such removal and try to restore just from the archive in the UI.

Plus, if I shutdown the VHR, the File level restore Wizard for Nas does not even launch. Saying "failed to start file recovery: backup meta files are not synchronized with the DB. To resolve this, run repository rescan" And a rescan on Data Cloud Vault did not help. So, we could not restore archive when the onpremise repository is dead ? if so, archive seems a bit useless.

Can you please raise a support case as the behavior is unexpected - failover to archive should be an option after the rescan has been performed.

Thank you!

[torteflo]

Hello Dima,

thanks for all answers!

1. backup copy not in license
in fact, the error message when creating a backup copy of our nas to Veeam Cloud Vault, is not about backuping Nas, but backuping it on object storage.
"Unable to use Veeam-Cloud-Vault as a target for file backup job. Backup to object storage requires a valid Enterprise edition license."

2. Browse Filer
I don't have our Filer displayed in 'Files' node of Veeam B&R console.

3. FLR with archive storage
with All Time button too, it never proposes me a restore from archive, only from local storage.

4. If only archive remain
Well I did not try nor want to remove the main local repository from VBR console...
What I tried, as I said, is just to shutdown it. And then I rescanned our archive repository, which is our Veeam Cloud Vault.

Another thing that troubles me is :
I cannot see the Nas archived backup in VBR console database : VBR Console > Home > Backups
in here we have our Nas backup Job in "Disk" section, which is its data on local repository only
We have also an "Object storage (copy)" section, in Home > backups, but in here there is only our VMware Backup Copy Job, not the Nas backup job nor its archive. And we have no other section.
On the other hand, I know the Nas archive is sent to Veeam Cloud Vault, I see it in the Nas Job logs ("uploaded data to archive repository xxx GB transfered at xx MB/s"), and I see it in the Veeam Cloud Vault space consumption.

Yes, I will raise a support case.
Kind Regards

[torteflo]

Hi !

as a really small and fast (and late!) feedback.
I opened a support case (07894209), and... that was a huge case for me, it last a long long time.
As far as I remember, we encountered several issues with together with the support engineers, but we finally found a few things, and resolved this somehow.

I would advise not to use the nas backup archive function in Veeam 12 ! probably better in v13, at least in theory, but i did not test it yet.

Plus, at some point when we simulated the loss of our main local backup, when we try restoring from the veeam cloud vault, the console ask if we want to download the metadatas loccally : even if we told yes and it seems to work with no error, it did not make this download metadatas operations. It did nothing and lost us. But when we understood that and did that operation manually, it works.

And for point 1, yes, we had a mixed Veeam license, sockets+vul, and somehow ofr Nas backup, it did not pick the vul part. I think my support contacts did not know why, as myself.

Thx for your help.