NetApp NAS backup snapshots

[mhayman]

We're backing up a NetApp NFS share and we are having issues with snapshots. We need to retain multiple snapshots on the NetApp but the Veeam backup is backing up the file share data plus all the snapshots. I've tried putting an exclusion in to ignore the snapshots (NFS path/.snapshot) but it doesn't do anything. I've changed the backup config from snapshot backup to straight file backup, nothing changes. I put in a ticket (below) and was told this was by design and that we should only keep 1 snapshot. Does anyone know of a way to get around this? Our file share data is only around 500GB but the backup is almost 6TB since we keep ~10 snapshots. We are not comfortable keeping only 1 snapshot on the NetApp.

Case # 04540079

[Dima P.]

Hello Mike,

Thanks for your post, please keep working with the support team and let us know how investigation goes. Cheers!

[mhayman]

We were advised to install the following update: https://www.veeam.com/kb4050

We installed it yesterday and ran the backup again last night, it's still backing up the snapshots. The engineer did say that if we put in an exclusion for the snapshots that it should not back them up. So now we're trying to figure out why the exclusion is not working.

Currently we've tried writing the exclusion in the following formats, but I'm not sure which is recommended or required.

nas_name:/vol_name/.snapshot

nas_name:/vol_name/.snapshot/*

I've run into issues before where .snapshot didn't work correctly and using ~snapshot did so that is my next test if no one has any other ideas.

[mhayman]

The backups finally worked as intended last night, the following exception format is what worked:

nas_name:/vol_name/.snapshot

That along with the most recent patch (https://www.veeam.com/kb4050) has done the trick. Instead of 6TB it backed up around 800GB. Now this was done backing up directly from the files, which is still not ideal. Once I have a new baseline I will try to change that back over to backing up from the snapshots and hopefully it only backs up the most recent snapshot, not all of them. I will post my results, but that won't be until next week. I don't want to test things over Christmas break.

[Gostev]

Great, thanks for keeping us posted on the progress! And have a very Merry Christmas!

[mhayman]

Thank you, same to you!

[mhayman]

Ok, final results are that we will be sticking with backing up directly from the files. After a few successful backups with the .snapshot exception working I tried switching back to backing up from the snapshot instead of directly from the files. This resulted in another 6TB backup as it backed up ALL of the snapshots again. So it appears that currently there is no way to get the backup to run against the most recent snapshot without backing up all of the snapshots that are present.

I'm hoping this is something that is fixed soon as it's generally much better to backup from the most recent snapshot so you don't have to deal with open/locked files. Having no way to backup from just the most recent snapshot instead of backing up all of the snapshots together seems like like a bit of an oversight.

[Gostev]

@Adam.Bergh @Andreas Neufert can you please take a look at this case? I find it hard to believe it's impossible to make this work with NetApp and v10. I thought we had people doing this since beta.

[Adam.Bergh]

By default, VBR v10 excludes the snapshot folders in our NAS backup jobs. See screenshot here for SMB:


NFS Example:


I've never heard of Veeam backup up data in the snapshot folders without a misconfiguration.

@mhayman could I work with you directly to see this issue first hand to see if I can duplicate in my lab?

Regards,
Adam Bergh

[mhayman]

Adam, of course, I'd be happy to work with you on this. I'll shoot you a message with contact info.