HPE StoreOnce Catalyst Store Optimization

[121x]

Hi All,

Question regarding leveraging the Catalyst stores of HPE StoreOnce appliances. In our environment we have multiple appliances at different sites, that replicate to each other using Veeam BCJ's. My question is, if we backup DC-A to Appliance A, Catalyst Store 1, and then replicate DC-B to Appliance A, Catalyst Store 1 - is that going to cause potential issues with overwriting or corrupting the primary backup data from DC-A backups? If not, will it improve the deduplication efficiency by having more 'like' data stored in a single Catalyst store on the appliance versus multiple Catalyst stores on the same appliance?

I have not seen this mentioned anywhere but perhaps I missed it.

Thank you

[121x]

It looks like I may have answered my own question:

https://www.veeam.com/kb2987

I guess ultimately it comes down to whether this is considered a best practice, or should be avoided if space optimization is not of the utmost importance. I am more concerned about reliability then squeezing every last ounce of storage out of the appliances.

[121x]

*Update

It appears too much time has elapsed and I cannot edit my previous post.

I have been trying to use the powershell command described in the posted KB article. And although I am able to successfully create the backup repository and it shows successfully in Veeam, when I use the: -Folder storeonce://172.0.11.20:VeeamRepo@/DC1-HVCluster01 command to specify the subfolder, when I access the repo within Veeam, the Catalyst store is greyed out and I cannot choose a store. However, if I use the command and do not specify a subfolder, the Veeam backup repository is successfully created and from within Veeam successfully shows the Catalyst store located on the StoreOnce appliance from the drop down.

So I was looking for some additional examples, hoping from one from HP to compare with. Reviewing the HP StoreOnce Catalyst best practices guide, the only thing I could find was the following excerpt from page 15 of the guide:

• Catalyst Store — Select the Catalyst Store to associate to this Veeam repository. The same Catalyst Store can be associated to more than one backup repository

So the guide states that more than one repo can be associated to a single Catalyst Store, but no where does it state the requirement for having to use a powershell command to support it.

Can someone please clarify the powershell requirement is still valid for the newest release of B&R or whether this is legacy? If still required, can someone confirm the proper command syntax? I am providing an example of the command I used, excluding the username and password.

Add-VBRBackupRepository -Name StoreOnce_Primary -Folder storeonce://172.0.11.20:VeeamRepo@/DC1-HVCluster01 -Type HPStoreOnceIntegration -StoreOnceServerName 172.0.11.20 -UserName <excluded> -Password <excluded>

Thanks for any insight or guidance.

[foggy]

I can confirm that the PS requirement is valid and should be met to avoid possible issues in such a scenario. Let me check regarding the command syntax though.

[121x]

Thank you.

[foggy]

And although I am able to successfully create the backup repository and it shows successfully in Veeam, when I use the: -Folder storeonce://172.0.11.20:VeeamRepo@/DC1-HVCluster01 command to specify the subfolder, when I access the repo within Veeam, the Catalyst store is greyed out and I cannot choose a store.

This is the expected behavior. Current Veeam B&R UI is not designed for folders, it is able to display only a store name. The full path is stored in the database, so the repository itself is fully functional – it is just the wizard that cannot process the custom value. This also incurs the inability to change any repository setting via UI, since it doesn't allow to save changes if the repository path is empty. The workaround is to change the repository settings via PowerShell.

[soncscy]

Out of curiosity, was this KB designed with input from HPE as well? How extensively was this tested, especially since this basically sounds like it's forcing the Storeonces to do what they don't want to.

I'm not doubting that it will work, I'm just curious what sort of long term testing was done on it and what HPE thinks about it. I've had a client bugging me on this repeatedly and I'm just not comfortable (call it paranoia) on this without some HPE seal of approval on handling this, or at least some information on the ramifications of a setup like this.

I like creative hacks when I understand what the hack is gonna do in the long term, but Storeonce (all dedup appliances really) are black boxes, and I don't like that at all.

[foggy]

Hi Harvey, yes, this w/a was published with the permission of HPE and was tested by them. It doesn't do anything that StoreOnce doesn't like, it just makes backup files "pretend" they are stored in different folders based on specific object name prefixes, that's all.