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RobMiller86
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GFS Immutability

Post by RobMiller86 »

I've noticed on VBAZ that no matter how you set your retention schedules, if you have immutability enabled on your daily retention blob repo, when you edit the policy, a pop-up appears:
The created backups will be immutable for a period based on the backup policy schedule with the daily retention flag. Do you want to proceed?
This seems to be the case regardless of if immutability is enabled or disabled on the other repos for weekly/monthly/yearly.

Am I correct to assume then that immutability is never extended past the daily retention time (plus ~10 days for block generation)? I'm basing this as it's worded "based on the backup policy schedule with the daily retention flag"

Also, if your daily retention repo is set to a "hot" folder in the container, and the weekly and monthly are set to a "cold" folder in the same container, does Veeam maintain completely separate chains in each folder/repo with a full backup in each folder/repo? Or does it still reference blocks between the different folders/repos to save storage usage?

I do believe that Archive maintains a completely separate and full chain in the Archive repo, but I'm not sure how that works between hot and cool.
lyudmila.ezerskaya
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Re: GFS Immutability

Post by lyudmila.ezerskaya »

Hi Rob!
Immutability is based on the repository settings. If you choose an immutable repo for a particular schedule, backups created by this schedule will be immutable for the specified retention period (plus ~ 10 days of block generation).
The warning message takes the most frequent schedule to warn you. For example, if you point the daily schedule to a mutable repository while the weekly and monthly schedules are pointed to an immutable repository, you will see the warning for the weekly schedule.
We will look into enhancing the message for future releases.

Also, you are right, Veeam Backup for Azure creates a separate chain in each specified repository without referencing blocks across different folders.

With best regards,
Lyudmila.
RobMiller86
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Re: GFS Immutability

Post by RobMiller86 »

Thank you Lyudmila!

One follow-up question about those folders. In VBAZ, if we set the daily backup, the weekly backup, and the monthly backup all to the same blob repository, same container/folder for all 3 schedules, does it still keep separate chains for daily/weekly/monthly? Or does it maintain them similar to how GFS works on a local VBR with block cloning?

Because if it maintains separate chains for each daily/weekly/monthly if they are in different repos, but not if they are in the same repo, then it probably doesn't make sense to even move them from a hot to a cool repo at the weekly or monthly levels for a 90 day retention. Can you shed any light on that?

Thanks,
Rob
lyudmila.ezerskaya
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Re: GFS Immutability

Post by lyudmila.ezerskaya »

If you specify the same repository(folder) for different schedules, Veeam Backup for Azure creates a single backup chain and uses flags to determine how long the restore points should be retained, as described in the User Guide.

With best regards,
Lyudmila
RobMiller86
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Re: GFS Immutability

Post by RobMiller86 »

Thank you again. I have reviewed the guides but some of this can be tricky to understand with immutability.

Ok, so we have a single chain then, provided the schedules are going to the same repo. Let me give one more example question so I understand.

Single repo. Call it "hot". Immutability turned on in this repo. All 3 schedules below go to this same immutable repo, in 1 single chain.

Daily backup, keep 7 days.
Weekly backup, keep for 1 month
Monthly backup, keep for 3 months

Are the backups made immutable for 7 days + 10 as per the daily schedule and what that notification states? Or are they made immutable for 3 months + 10 days since the repo is immutable and we are essentially keeping GFS in the same repo?
lyudmila.ezerskaya
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Re: GFS Immutability

Post by lyudmila.ezerskaya »

In this scenario, backups created by the daily schedule will have the D flag assigned and will be immutable for 7 days (plus block generation); backups created on days specified in the weekly schedule will additionally have the W flag and will be immutable for a month (plus block generation). As a result, we will keep only weekly backups and the depending data blocks for a longer period.

The same principle applies to the monthly backups, only backups marked with the M flag and the depending data blocks will be retained for 3 months. All unnecessary data blocks will be removed according to their retention.

For a clearer grasp of how the flags work, you can refer to the example outlined in the User Guide.

With best regards,
Lyudmila
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