Archive tier space reduction from capacity tier

[theviking84]

I have a sobr with 23.7 TB on the aws capacity tier. Then I enable archive tier and 11.4 TB has been archived.

Next couple of days pass and I read the sobr reports. Capacity tier still showing 23TB.

The data is supposed to be moved from capacity to archive but it seems in this case it was copied instead and only a tiny bit was removed?

Does immutability of the blocks in the capacity tier play a part here and veeam must wait to actually remove this data from capacity tier, but it knows and will eventually do this?

I have 4 days set but plus block generation should equal 14.

[Mildur]

Hi David

Veeam stores unique blocks in the capacity tier.
Most of the offloaded blocks are needed by the other restore points in the capacity tier (the data which is the same between the different restore points) and can not be deleted after a restore point was offloaded to the Archive tier.

I think that‘s the case in your situation. What is the size of your fullbackup?

[theviking84]

The archive tier was marketed as reducing the cost of storage from regular s3 to glacier.

If nothing is deleted from capacity tier then there would be no cost savings and in fact a net increase due to the glacier costs.

I understand not being able to delete blocks that are needed by other restore points but surely after immutability passes there will be some reduction on the used space in capacity tier or this doesn't make sense to even use it.

23.9 tb was original size and its still 23 now after offloading 11.4 to archive tier.

[Mildur]

The restore points on the capacity tier needs to be self contained. If blocks would be moved away which are needed to restore a restore point from the capacity tier, then capacity tier can not be used for restores.

If you have a huge amount of unchanged data in your restore points, then archive tier will not help you very much to save space on the capacity tier. The size of an entire fullbackup will always be stored in the capacity tier.

[Gostev]

See my sample archiving cost efficiency calculation here (for Azure but same idea).

[theviking84]

Thanks for that post. That makes sense. Over time it will help curb spending and I can increase retention to help amplify it. I think legal wants more anyway.