Questions about capacity tier

[fuzzer]

Hi,

we have a Scale Out Backup Repository with Capacity Tier enabled, Azure Blob.
Enabled both "Copy backups to object storage as soon as they are created" and "Move backups to object storage as they age out of the operational window".

Two questions:
Doble checking if I understand it correctly: If I set "Move backup files older than XX days" to 30 in the capacity tier property, and in the backup jobs (lets say I have 2 jobs) I set retention policy to 30 for job1 and 60 for job2.
Will it then move nothing for job1 to capacity tier? And will it move retention points 31-60 for job2 from the SOBR to the capacity tier, when it reaches 61 retention points in total it will delete the oldest from capacity tier?

I also enabled "Copy backups to object storage as soon as they are created", but how do I verify that these are in the capacity tier? How can I do a test-restore from a immediate copy? In the normal "restore" point i only see on-prem restore points for the immediate backups.

thanks for any help!

[PetrM]

Hello,

All 30 restore points produced by Job1 will be copied to an object storage because of "Copy backups to object storage as soon as they are created" option enabled.
The "Copy" policy is aimed to create a replica of your backup data on an object storage so that you can quickly restore data in case of any unexpected failure of any of your extents.
You can find more information about restore scenarios on our help center.

The same rule also works for Job2: all 60 restore points will be copied to an object storage but "Move backup files older than: " setting will be taken into account as well.
Once an operational restore window is exceeded (30 days in your case), data blocks will be removed from each backup file which belongs to an inactive chain and only metadata will be preserved.
I think the workflow is described in sufficient detail in the section "Combining Copy and Move Operations" from this page.

Retention policy works independently of Capacity Tier settings, restore points falling under the retention policy will be removed from both object storage and on-premises extents.

You may use Object Storage node under Backups node on Home view in order to verify which backups have been offloaded to Capacity Tier.

Thanks!

[stewsie]

Hi

I also have a question regarding the capacity tier. I am testing this at the moment with S3 storage. For the test I have a backup job with 7 retentions. The capacity tier is set as follows

Only Move backup to object storage is selected older than 1 day.

Nothing happened until I selected Copy backups as they are created. Backup files are being deleted on S3 which is not what I was expecting.

What I was trying to achieve was as the backups reach 7 retentions files will be moved to the capacity tier and retained for 30 days which is the setting on the S3 repository. What have I done wrong or missed?

Thanks

[oleg.feoktistov]

Hi Paul,

Backup files belonging to the active (current) backup chain cannot be offloaded. As stated on Backup Chain Detection page of the User Guide, here are the criterion for offload if move policy is selected:

• For primary backup jobs: restore points in inactive parts of backup chains. Meaning: for forward incremental backup - all restore points prior to the latest full backup; for reverse incremental backup - all restore points starting from the third most recent restore point.

• For backup copy jobs: only full backups with GFS flags (since recent backups chains remains active at all times).

Now, about your config goal. As far as I understood, you are talking about primary backup job, right? And what is 30 days setting you mentioned? Is it what you adjusted for 'Move backup files older than X days' setting in Scale-Out Repository properties?

Thanks,
Oleg

[stewsie]

The 30 days I mentioned is the setting on the S3 repository in Veeam to make backups immutable for x amount of days. The goal is to keep a set number of retention points on site such as 7 or 14 and then keep up to 56 on the S3 immutable storage. At the moment the S3 storage seems to be using the retention policy from the performance tier.

Thanks

[veremin]

It's expected, see the explanation provided here. Thanks!

[stewsie]

Will do. Thanks

[stewsie]

I am really struggling to understand using S3 storage to provide the number of immutable retentions we need. As I have said before we are only testing this but it isn't working as I want it to.

I want to keep 14 retention points locally so have configured weekly full backups and a retention of 14
The Capacity Tier is set at the moment to move backups older than 14 and also to move backups as they are created
The S3 bucket settings in Veeam is set to make backups immutable for 30 days. This would be changed to 56 when testing has finished.

What happens is that when the retention policy on local storage has been met this also applies the retention policy to the capacity tier so only 14 retentions exist in both locations.

I have seen some of the documentation that has been suggested but is there an easy way to fulfil the requirements?

[stewsie]

I have just set the retention on the backup to 56 and the setting on the capacity tier to move backups older than 14. Maybe this will give me the configuration I need

[Gostev]

That's right.

[stewsie]

Yes the retentions now look much better.

If I look at restoring a VM from the capacity tier I can only see the option to restore files that aren't on the performance tier. For example the object storage shows 19 retentions but if I want to restore from capacity tier I can only see the 5 retention points on the capacity tier when running a restore and selecting a restore point. Is this because Veeam can see the retentions are still available on the performance tier? What if the backups are corrupted by ransomware on the performance tier only? Would I somehow be able to restore from the capacity tier?

Hope this makes sense

[Gostev]

Yes. If you take the Performance Tier extent offline or place it into the maintenance mode, the restore will be performed from backups in the Capacity Tier.

[stewsie]

Thanks Gostev