9.5 Update 4 and Microsoft Azure Blob Storage

[mcz]

Michael, what about setting a time-based retention lock on the storage container?
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/ ... le-storage

Anton, I've now attached object storage (azure) to our SOBR and it is beautiful
BUT: Immutable storage does conflict with the current veeam implementation... Would you like to discuss this topic with your collegues from product management?

[v.eremin]

No support for immutable storage at the moment, but thanks for the feature request!

[Gostev]

It is unlikely that immutable storage will ever be supported for Capacity Tier due to its WORM nature. There are just too many issues around "online storage" use case with most basic stuff that you don't immediately realize, like inability to cleanup incomplete or failed writes even.

However, we will certainly consider immutability for possible future Archive Tier, which is a different use case from Capacity Tier that will likely have vastly different integration approach - due to Glacier-type storage peculiarities and those issues enabling immutability brings. Which also means that will lose most of the benefits of Capacity Tier, and it will no longer be "beautiful" limiting you to true archival scenarios (essentially making it an off-site tape archive replacement).

[dimaslan]

Not sure if this was answered already, I was just wondering since the Azure blob Archival storage is charging for delete operations as well, won't there be a charge when, let's say in 13 months from now you go and send the new monthly backup and have to delete the oldest one?

Thank you.

[v.eremin]

As far as I know, you have to pay deletion fee, only if blob has not stayed in Archive Tier for 180 days (it's called early deletion period). Thanks!

[networkup]

I have my scale up setup so it goes to the NAS then for my capacity tier I have it set at 0 days. The full backup has been taken and is sitting on the NAS 2 hours later the backup has not made it into azure blob storage. How long does it take? Once it does appear in the blob storage will it be deleted from the NAS? If it is deleted from the NAS is there anyway to configure that not to happen and just have it as a copy only back in Azure?

Would appreciate any help, struggling to understand the documentation not finding it very clear at all

[Gostev]

Backups belonging to an active chain will not be uploaded.

Just to remind: Capacity Tier is designed to keep oldest backup files, which you are unlikely to have to restore from. In classic storage tiering terms, it's called "cold" data. 0-day offload schedule is not the correct way to use Capacity Tier, as something created 2 hours ago is a very much "hot" data that you may have to restore in the next few hours - there's really no point to remove it from on-prem immediately after creation.

[networkup]

Thank you @gostev this has helped with my understanding greatly.


So if i understand correctly and i set up my backup routine along the lines below with my offload schedule set to 7 days.

Week 1

Monday - Thurs Incremental
Fri Full backup

Week 2

Monday - Thurs Incremental
Fri Full backup
On Friday my full backup from week 1 should be getting offloaded to Azure Blob Storage.

Is my understanding correct? Is there a better way to be doing it?

My only concern is the time week 2 comes and week 1 full backup can be offloaded to Azure the data is 2 weeks old

Thank you for help!

---edit now i have got two full backups the oldest one has been shipped off to Azure blob storage successfully. Should the one which has been shipped of to Azure blob storage have been deleted locally on the NAS as it is still there..?

[Gostev]

It's not really there, look at its size what is left on NAS is a VBK stub containing metadata only - this serves as a local cache, for performance considerations and to reduce the number of API calls which object storage providers often charge extra for.

[networkup]

Thank you so much Gostev!!! Slowly getting my head around this Your right it is a little VBK file

[networkup]

One last question for the day, is functionality coming which will allow me to backup to the local NAS and this copy is then also instantly sent up to Azure blob storage so i have the backup in two places? We have DPM by Microsoft which has this functionally, we do a NAS backup and a few hours later it is sent up to Azure storage.

If there is a workaround which would let me do this that would be great , otherwise our Manager will force us onto DPM which i really do not want. Why DPMs cloud backups are spot on we have a lot of problems with it crashing etc.

[Gostev]

One last question for the day, is functionality coming which will allow me to backup to the local NAS and this copy is then also instantly sent up to Azure blob storage so i have the backup in two places?

Correct, as per my post on the first page (copy mode).

[networkup]

Perfect!!

When is the eta on that and version? Is there a beta about I can demo to my manager so he stops pushing for us to ditch it

Found the post apologies glazed over that first time

[Gostev]

It's planned for our 2019 release, however we don't provide ETAs - because we only ship the code When It's Ready™

Beta is a little too early to talk about, considering we just barely shipped the previous release

[networkup]

Quick question how long do the restore points get stored in Azure blob storage. Is it determined by "Restore points to keep on disk"? on the backup jobs?

So if we have 30 days in the "restore points to keep on disk" in the backup job, on day 31 day will one of the restore points be restored from Azure? Does Veeam send some message up to Azure to do this?

Thanks