Solution to perform a Backup Copy to AWS S3

[maggoit]

Hello all, I'm using the CE edition.

For the last 2 months I've been trying to create a Backup copy using the AWS S3, but:

- Only works if I use the AWS Gateway VM (NFS share). If I try to use the S3 NFS share directly, w/o using the GW, it fails with a lot of drops or IO errors.

- If I do a 'normal' backup (it should work), why ? I'm saying it should work because I set up a remote VM, on Contabo (DE), using NFS share, and I got the same issues. I cannot do a backup copy, but I can do a normal backup.

What are the differences between the two methods? or I m missing something ??
Using the Aws GW is too expensive !! And we don't have any VMs on AWS, I only want is a remote solution to off-site my backups.

Regards.
JG

[Gostev]

Hello! Veeam does not support S3 object storage through gateways in principle, particularly due to issues like you mentioned. Only our native S3 integration is supported, however this feature is not available in CE. I recommend you upgrade your CE to Veeam Essentials, it costs just $400 per year to cover the same number of workloads as CE provides. Thanks!

[maggoit]

Thank you @Gostev for your quick reply.

Let's clarify, if possible, the solution I want to implement, and BTW we are a very small company, the free solution has served us well so far, and for some of us $400 is too much to support, and yes I agree, there are all other solutions than Veeam. But I use and used, Veeam since almost its beginning, but as I said, at this moment paying is very difficult.
But as I asked, is there any 'solution' to do an off-site cloud-based solution that I can use?
Using Veeam for AWS, is as you said paid, even the 'free' version, since , afaik, I need to deploy an VPC on AWS, and I tested it with the eval version, but I couldn't do the off-site backup, or I misunderstood all deployment of it. What I saw was a solution to backup AWS 'obejects' and not to provide a storage for my off-site solution.
For that, and also as I said. I can use the AWS Gateway solution, but it's revealing to be way too much expensive for us.

Also as I said, I can do a backup to a remote (Germany) NFS share, w/o problems, but if I switch from backup to 'backup copy', well that's when the problem begins.
And the question is why.

I'm doing backups to NFS shares outside the HQ, but can't do 'backup copy' to the same shares ...
Well, I can do 'different' time backups, but if Veeam has the backup copy why not use it?

Thanks.
JG

[Gostev]

But as I asked, is there any 'solution' to do an off-site cloud-based solution that I can use?

The answer is no: not for S3 as a target.

While you can try to build something with workarounds like S3 gateways, this won't work reliably and/or will cost you more than buying Veeam.

The paid version of Veeam integrates directly with S3 for offsite copy backup purposes using SOBR Capacity Tier with Copy policy (no VPC or gateways is required).

[maggoit]

Thank you @Gostev,
I might not have looked well for that case. I'm going to, and than you for your reply.
But, taking the S3 off the equation, using my VPS NFS Server, which is no S3, the same situation happens.
I can do a backup the the NFS Repo, but I can't do it using the backup copy option. This also applies to an NFS share on my home NAS, in the same country.
Any thoughts?
Thanks again.
JG

[Gostev]

You were asking about S3 before. If we're no longer talking about S3 but a regular NFS share, then this should work fine as long as the NFS share in question is backed by proper storage and not "home NAS" (these are extremely unreliable and prone to corrupting backups).

[maggoit]

Yes, that's correct, but also in my initial question, I also refer to an NFS share, when I compare the S3 operation with the NFS remote share. Also did the same on the 2nd reply.

So, why, isn't Veeam capable (?) of using the NFS remote shares for the backup copy, and can use them for the backup operation?
As you said this started to be S3 related, but I also tested with an NFS remote share and have the same issues.
Thanks again for your reply.
JG

[maggoit]

Well, Home NAS'es or remote VPS, all are subject to failures, also I m doing the backups to some old USB external drives.
Hence the POC uses the S3 buckets.
I just want to find a solution that won't cost us a ton of money, and the one using S3 and the AWS Gateway is costing a lot that I have to suspend it.
We have a Hyper-V 2019 core. with 4 VM's, Windows Server x2 & Linux x2, these use around 4TB of total backup space month.
So I need a remote storage with 4TB, AWS S3 has now 2.7TB with the 4 VMS, but has only a full backup of each and a 7 day inc.

[Gostev]

NFS share based backup repositories are fully supported and are not uncommon. If this does not work for you, then something is wrong either with an NFS share itself, or connection to it.

For the cheapest solution that I personally would trust my business data, I would recommend Veeam Essentials + Wasabi for off-site backups. I would never use a remote NFS share because NFS protocol does not provide guaranteed intact payload delivery.

[maggoit]

Hello, I m looking on to Wasabi, and I wish to thank you for the recommendation.
As far as the price concerns look's far better than AWS .. Let's see if I can use it as Block Storage, w/o ant GW in between.
Thank you.
JG

[Gostev]

Ultimately, Wasabi only provides S3 object storage. They also offer "Cloud NAS" which is effectively a gateway software to present that object storage as NAS, but keep in mind this approach is explicitly not supported by Veeam.

[Naja]

Hello, I m looking on to Wasabi, and I wish to thank you for the recommendation.
As far as the price concerns look's far better than AWS .. Let's see if I can use it as Block Storage, w/o ant GW in between.
Thank you.
JG

Or directly you can use tools like Goodsync or Gs Richcopy360 to perform your backup directly to AWS S3 or between AWS storages without the need to Wasabi

[Andreas Neufert]

If you copy backup files to the cloud with sync solutions, then you need to switch to Synthetic Full + Incrementals as otherwise daily the full need to be uploaded (as changed). Anyway Synthetic Full + Incremental would mean you would store at least a weekly full in the cloud and you would have multiple fulls in the cloud. Our S3 integration is incremental forever and use block cloning to reduce data amount (in addition to inline dedup/compression). So likely the $400 for the paid Veeam version would be cheaper.
This is true as well for the gateway solutions (it they would work reliable, see above).

For remote NFS servers, I suggest to look for an option to run our Repository Gateway Server on the site of the NFS server. This would optimize WAN usage a lot. Potentially a lot of NFS servers allow Veeam the usage as Linux Repository Server (and store data locally within the filesystem).