NAS Backup from Netapp Secondary

[MatzeB]

Hello,

I have a feature request about NAS backup from enterprise storage.
Most of our customers use Netapp storage systems as file servers. In some projects I have already used the Netapp integration into the NAS backup, but this has an unpleasant limitation.

Often the backup chain at the customer looks like this:
Primary Netapp --> Snapmirror to Secondary Netapp --> NAS/Offsite/Tape Backup or similar.

So in the Netapp environment it is very common that file/NAS based backups are done from the secondary system. If you try to do this with Veeam you get an error because the replication target is by design read-only. However, Veeam always tries to trigger a StorageSnapshot, which will fail.

Code: Select all

16.05.2023 18:00:09 :: Processing DEMO5_NS\DEMO5_NS:\vol_demo5_sata_cifs_share03_dst Error: Snapshot copies can only be created on read/write (RW) volumes  

From my point of view it would make sense that Veeam recognizes that it is a DP (Data Protection) volume and then does not try to create a snapshot here.


I have already discussed this with @Dima at VeeamON in Miami.

Regards
Matze

[Dima P.]

Hello Matthias,

Thank you so much for sharing this request and additional thanks for getting in touch via RnD forums! I fully understand the use case and will discuss it with NAS team. Meanwhile consider this improvement request noted!

[TimonD]

Hello,

I also think that this would be a reasonable feature (Veeam beeing able to backup from a DP volume). You could move the load from running the backup to a secondary NetApp and away from the productive NetApp.

Regards
Timon

[MatzeB]

@Dima any news on this request?

Regards
Matze

[Andreas Neufert]

You can do this today already.
Add the share as regular NAS share for backup. Define an alternative path in the configuration and point it to the Secondary Storage snapshot place or mount point.
Create a script that creates the snapshot and update the secondary storage snapshot and potentially mount it at the secondary storage if you do not allow general snapshot access in the tree (adjust alternative path accordingly).

It is just some line of code with NetApp. You can find samples within the internet.

[MatzeB]

Hi Andreas,

sure i know this - but that is no reason not to implement this nativ into veeam. Not every customer wants manual scripting there. As it's common in NetApp environments to make streaming backups from the secondary stroage it should not be a big deal.
Also for Veeam it should be very easy to detect "volume = RW" --> Take Snapshot, "volume = DP" --> no Snapshot.

Regards
Matze