Veeam and Azure BLOB

[quentinc25]

Is there a way to copy directly to Azure BLOB storage without having to use SOBR? We would like to create a separate weekly job to copy our weekly fulls. Our issue is we have too much data to backup and send to Azure every night using SOBR. Would it be best to setup a Veeam Azure Appliance in Azure? Not sure if this will give us the ability to copy directly to Azure or if this is only used to backup VM's that are created in Azure. Guess I am really looking for a better way to control the jobs that send the data to Azure. If we use our nightly Jobs then the scale out jobs will start running while the primary job is running. The only other way I can think of to accomplish this is to create a backup copy job using the Azure SOBR. Problem with this is I would need another storage location to act as the performance tier.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

[wishr]

Hi Quentin,

Currently, with v11, you cannot send backups directly to object storage, but this capability is on the roadmap.

As a workaround, you may configure a backup copy job to another SOBR (which may have just a single repo under the hood) to copy the only desired restore points there and use "Move" mode to be offloading them to object storage as soon as they are created on that SOBR.

Thanks

[veremin]

"Our issue is we have too much data to backup and send to Azure every night using SOBR."
I'm wondering whether you are completely sure about that - Capacity Tier is working in forward forever incremental fashion, meaning already offloaded blocks are not transferred again. So after initial sync it will be only changes that get offload daily. Thanks!

[quentinc25]

So would the weekly full backups only offload the change blocks or would it transfer all the data to Azure again? I test using "copy backups to object storage as soon as they are created" but the jobs kept taking resources from each other so it would have taken days to finish.

[wishr]

Yes, only changed blocks will be offloaded regardless of the selected mode.

[quentinc25]

What I think would be really good is if you could schedule the SOBR offload to Azure. This would allow all of backups going to the performance tier to complete before attempting to run the offloads. From my testing the offloads will start after a few VMs have completed but the primary job to the performance tier is still going. Backing up to your performance tier can impact production but I am assuming the offload is being copied from the performance tier which wouldn't impact production?

[Mildur]

You can schedule them with the „allowed offload window“ in the capacity tier step in the SOBR properties. In the right top corner is the button „window“.



The offload is being done from the performance tier extend, if you don‘t have choosen a server by yourself.
You can choose a dedicated windows or linux server in the object storage properties. I think, the vbr server is the default s3 offload gateway server, but I am not sure.

[oleg.feoktistov]

Fabian, default offload gateway server is the performance extent backup is being offloaded from. It makes little sense to have an additional entity on the way as a default option. Thanks!

[Mildur]

Thanks Oleg for the explanation.
That makes absolutely sense

I think, in my environment, the vbr server was used because my extends are linux hardened Repos. They can not be a S3 Gateway Server by design.

[quentinc25]

I ran a test job last night after setting up the capacity tier window and everything seem to work as scheduled. The only odd thing I see is that in addition to the backup job I had two SOBR Offload Tiering jobs associated with the backup job. Is this normal? They both processed the same servers during the same time frame. Assuming its probably a part of the tiering process.

[Mildur]

two SOBR Offload Tiering jobs

I can see that two in my environment. It's completely normal:
object-storage-f52/sobr-offload-job-run ... 64106.html

[wishr]

Yes, this is normal. Please, refer here for details.

[quentinc25]

Thanks for all the information!! I do have a few more questions, if I need to restore I am assuming it will look to the performance tier first and if its unavailable it will pull from Azure? Also, as backups age out and are removed from the performance tier will they also be removed from the capacity tier?

[Gostev]

Yes. And even when restoring from Capacity Tier, to improve restore performance and reduce costs, we will automatically take any matching block from Performance Tier - as opposed to just blindly pulling everything from Azure.

If by "age out" you mean "backup job's retention policy" then yes.