Azure Archive Tier support

[jedwood]

I know Veeam currently do not offer moving backup copy jobs into Azure Blob Storage and it only integrates with Cool.
My question is will this change in future releases as the price different is significant and we have recently moved from Alta Vault which supported this functionality to Veeam/Azure integration and now can't take advantage of the lower tier storage. Or is there something fundamentally stopping this from being introduced?
Starwind VTL is an option but this will mean unpicking the current design after a lot of hard work to have it working as we would like.

I'm sure others have this dilemma so if anyone can share any alternative solutions it wold be appreciated.

[jmmarton]

Backup Copy Jobs are definitely supported with Azure Blob as long as you create long term GFS retention points (weekly/monthly/quarterly/yearly). Azure Blob has Hot, Cool, and Archive tiers. We support both Hot and Cool tiers. If you mean Archive tier, you are correct that VTL is the only option to leverage that.

Joe

[veremin]

I know Veeam currently do not offer moving backup copy jobs into Azure Blob Storage and it only integrates with Cool.

I'm also wondering where this knowledge is coming from. Thanks!

[jedwood]

Apologies Veremin I missed out a key word...... Archive, so it should have read:

I know Veeam currently do not offer moving backup copy jobs into Azure Blob Archive Storage and it only integrates with Cool.

Many thanks to Joe for your response.
Is this something that may be added in future releases or will archive storage not be achievable due to the way the Veeam/Azure integration works?

[veremin]

We are aware of this demand, but currently cannot provide any comments regarding when or whether this feature will be released. Azure Blob Archive Tier indeed has too many design specifics making this feature incompatible with Scale-Out Backup Repoisitory Capacity Tier. Thanks!

[wendellmoine]

I know that currently VEEAM doesn't support using an Azure blob set to archive tier as the capacity tier for a SOBR. Has anyone found a way to have their VEEAM backups move to archive tier in Azure after the fact using the Life cycle Management tools Azure provides? We want to use an Azure blob container set to cool tier as the capacity tier for our SOBR and then have that data moved to Archive tier using Azure's tools We have this set up, but after the first backup sets in Azure get moved to archive tier, the SOBR tiering in VEEAM breaks and will not write anymore backups to that blob container.

[Gostev]

There's no way to do this in a way that would be supported by Veeam. The content of the Azure blob container must be managed 100% by Veeam.

[sakaufma1]

I was hoping to use archive tier as tape replacement and the cost difference between cool and archive is pretty big. But it seems like it's not possible with Azure. I haven't looked into AWS, is it the same thing?

Even if you could have it enter as "cool" and then have it phase out into archive/glacier and that would be great. I realize you'd have to move it back to cool tier before attempting a restore.

[veremin]

As mentioned, such configuration is not supported and does not work. Thanks!

[sakaufma1]

Yea, I realized after I posted someone asked the same question. I edited my post. But does the same problem exist in AWS? Is there no way to take advantage of the super cheap archive storage from MS or Amazon?

[Gostev]

I was hoping to use archive tier as tape replacement and the cost difference between cool and archive is pretty big.

If you're literally looking for a tape replacement, then using Backup to Tape jobs pointed to VTL in front of Azure Blob Archive Tier (or Amazon Glacier) is something Veeam already fully supports today.

[wendellmoine]

Has anyone successfully implemented Starwinds VTL for Azure blob storage using Archive tier? Is this supported by Veeam? Any information or experience with this would be helpful. Thanks in advance.

[veremin]

Is this supported by Veeam?

Correct.

Any information or experience with this would be helpful.

Set VTL to use Azure Blob storage (archive tier), add it as a tape server to backup console, configure tape infrastructure, including tape jobs and you're good to go.

[onthax]

is this supported in v10 or still recommending VTL?

[dalbertson]

VTL is still the recommendation

[jedwood]

One thing to consider is the fact that the upload to Azure Blob Storage takes advantage of Veeam data compression and deduplication which reduces the size of the backups and more importantly the volume of data uploaded to Azure each month. This has reduced our monthly costs significantly as originally our forecast was based on no data compression or deduplication.

[veehexx]

We're currently looking at moving from glacier to azure for our long term/last resort archive data. billing side has been a bit of a problem for us in both trying to get it raised on invoice (rather than CC) and the ongoing monthly costs in AWS. Looking into it again seems azure has the cheaper archive costs and we're already setup for Azure invoicing. Only reason i chose AWS was not going with the many eggs in 1 basket anology.

Am i right in thinking that although veeam has a built-in VTL solution for aws, that azure has to use a 3rd party VTL (starwinds seems to be way forward based on this thread).

also when creating our azure storage blob, it's only showing hot&cold options and not archive tier. Is there any documentation on configuring veeam with azure vtl archive tier?

[dalbertson]

Veeam doesnt have a built in VTL for either. For AWS most use the AWS storage GW in VTL mode. For azure starwind has a VTL device that works well.

Pricing for Azure vs AWS is usually the same or REALLY close as they monitor each other pretty well. So if you are expecting a huge price difference you are most likely in for a letdown. If you have pricing issues with glacier / deep archive then you are most likely not configured properly or are using glacier ineffectively.

[veehexx]

ah, yes your right. AWS is running in VTL mode.
As for Azure, i've also just configured the Starwind VTL Free edition. at the time of my previous post it looked like it was purchase-only software.

it's not so much Glacier is expensive, more down to the fact we're being billed on credit card rather than invoice and our VAR's are not being too supportive with moving the bill to invoiced for us.
We do have azure on invoice already as we use it in hybrid with onprem. I do need to look exactly how the storage billing works for it though. Any backups appear to be going to cold tier first and then starwind VTL moves to archive. if i've understood Azure costs correctly then they'll be one charge for cold and another for the "rewrite" IO to archive tier.

We are still at the research stage of this though - just exploring exactly whats needed to deploy and get veeam&azure in a working state...which i appear to be there with now. We've already been bit by bad/misunderstood VAR info with Glacier so this time i'm doing even more research into exactly whats needed and the reality of it. While there might not be much change to the bottom line, this is more to do with getting the finance side done correctly.

[akraker]

For anyone that has implemented Starwind VTL as a tape repository can you tell me how it is working for you in a scale out repository setup? If I am backing up the first few weeks of backups to Azure cold tier and quarterly's and yearly are set to move to the VTL archive tier through the same azure blob, is the retention backup copied from the cold tier to archive directly on Azure or does it proxy through the on premise VBR instance? Or maybe they are just maintained as sperate chains all together with longer retention for the VTL repository?

[dalbertson]

It is separate chains. Tape jobs are not part of a SOBR repo so they are a different chain.