Calculating required storage requirements with Wasabi & best practice

[Twill]

Hi All,

I'm looking at switching our current on prem backup exec and tapes to Veeam with use of Wasabi immutable storage. The only question remaining is calculating the correct amount of storage for costing. We have around 25TB when compressed currently on weekly backups.

Due to the 90 day minimum retention period I'm debating the best way to set this up? If we did weekly full backups and daily incremental with SOBR using onsite storage as the performance tier and a Wasabi Immutability for Capacity Tier would end up paying for each weekly backup worth of data on Wasabi for the full 90 days, potentially 12x25TB?

Having not used reverse incremental or forever incremental before these sound like possible solutions. Would I be correct in saying with forever we'd end up using the initial full backup + data churn over the 90 days at a block level so we shouldn't expect that much use? Would reverse incremental be a safer way of doing this having a newer full backup file then 90 days retention set to clear out .vrb files containing content deleted for up to 90 days?

I'd be interested to hear in how others have setup their job and retention or best practice.

[Mildur]

Hi Thomas

Welcome to the Forums. You can use this link to calculate the required storage:
https://calculator.veeam.com/vbr/

Due to the 90 day minimum retention period I'm debating the best way to set this up?

As far as I know, when you upload Veeam objects to Wasabi, they lower that requirement to 30 days. Best to ask Wasabi directly. I cannot find the statement on their website.

If we did weekly full backups and daily incremental with SOBR using onsite storage as the performance tier and a Wasabi Immutability for Capacity Tier would end up paying for each weekly backup worth of data on Wasabi for the full 90 days, potentially 12x25TB?

First, you have to know, Data on the capacity tier (Object Storage) is forever forward incremental.
Veeam doesn't store "backup files" on the object storage. Veeam offloads only unique blocks of the restore points to the object storage. The first offload to object storage is of course the size of a full backup. All subsequent offloads only upload changed blocks to wasabi. You will never see 12*25TB in the object storage. Think of 1* Full (25TB) and 89* incremental backups (TB size depends on your daily change rate)

Would I be correct in saying with forever we'd end up using the initial full backup + data churn over the 90 days at a block level so we shouldn't expect that much use? Would reverse incremental be a safer way of doing this having a newer full backup file then 90 days retention set to clear out .vrb files containing content deleted for up to 90 days?

I recommend to stay with Forward Incremental with weekly fulls. Capacity tier works fine with that. It doesn't require more storage as the other two methods.

[Twill]

Thanks for that explanation Mildur, very helpful. Just to check I've understood everything correct:

So full weekly backups wouldn't actually change the amount of storage being used in capacity tier as only the block level changes that haven't already been uploaded from the previous 7 days full and incremental combined? Effectively no additional storage gets at the weekly full then?

The 30 day minimum retention is better for us. With this in mind, having immutable set at the block level would that mean if Veeam was set to 31 day immutable policy everything would remain at 31 days immutable providing they still exist at the source? Blocks of immutable date would only stop once advancing once that block has been deleted from the live data?

[veremin]

Effectively no additional storage gets at the weekly full then?

Your backup chain is changing during the week, so previous weekly full is different than current weekly full. The size of the difference depends on your daily change rate. During offload the process will check what blocks constitute to this difference and only those blocks will be transferred to object storage.

With this in mind, having immutable set at the block level would that mean if Veeam was set to 31 day immutable policy everything would remain at 31 days immutable providing they still exist at the source? Blocks of immutable date would only stop once advancing once that block has been deleted from the live data?

Not sure whether I completely got your question, but with 31 day immutability period, the blocks restore points consisting of will be immutable on object storage for at least 31 days, even if the source data is removed.

Thanks!

[Twill]

Sorry to come back to this, just running Veeam Essentials trial and Wasabi's 1TB trial when it occurred to me will forever forward incremental work fine when used with S3 immutable? As part of forever forward the data blocks must be injected into the original vkb file which wouldn't work while immutable?

[Mildur]

Hi Tom

We don‘t offload VBKs or VIBs to object storage.
Each object we offload is a unique block of a vbk or vib.
So there will be no injection, just another unique block as an object.
When you start the restore, our product will download the required blocks automatically.

Thanks
Fabian