Migrating backup copies from non-immutable to immutable repositories

[mriesenbeck]

Hello,

I'm looking for the best way(s) to migrate existing backup copies from non-immutable repositories to immutable repositories, without having to wait out the retention period. (which could be several years in some cases). Ideally there would be a way to move backups from one repository to another (this also applies to non-immutable obviously) from within Veeam, but since there is not, how would you go about to moving EXISTING backups and backup copies from non-immutable to immutable?

Especially since I don't want to have to wait out a 7 years retention period for instance.

Just copying the backup copies from the non-immutable repository to the immutable one with sftp or something, rescan and remap, would that work? Probably not

Cheers, Michael

[Mildur]

Best way would be to convert your repo into a SOBR and offload all your inactive chains to an object storage with Object Lock Support.

In the vbr console, you can set a maximum immutable retention to 90days.
On the Shell, it‘s 999 days:
object-storage-f52/what-is-the-maximum- ... 66740.html

For Linux Hardened Repo, your old restore point are not automatically be converted into immutable ones.

[mriesenbeck]

Unfortunately I want/need to migrate to Hardened Linux Repo on prem, not to Object storage.

[Mildur]

You could move them manually to the Hardened Repo and make them immutable with sudo rights.
sudo chattr +i /data/veeam/backupfile.vbk

Immutable Retention will not be managed by veeam, but the file is protected from deletion from inside the the veeam console.

I'm not sure, if the "Performance Extends Evacuation process" will help you to do an automatic "immutable flagging":
https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backu ... ml?ver=110

[soncscy]

You can actually set immutability for a given backup/restore points at the Veeam level

https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backu ... ml?ver=110

Gather the restore points with

$rps = Get-VBRRestorePoint -Backup (Get-VBRBackup -name 'Name of your backup')
Set-VBRImmutabilityLockExpirationDate -RestorePoint -$rps -ExpirationDate $Date

Where $date is some DateTime Object

I've done this already with some clients and it's flawless.

[Mildur]

Thanks harvey for the information

[mriesenbeck]

You could move them manually to the Hardened Repo and make them immutable with sudo rights.
sudo chattr +i /data/veeam/backupfile.vbk

Immutable Retention will not be managed by veeam, but the file is protected from deletion from inside the the veeam console.

I'm not sure, if the "Performance Extends Evacuation process" will help you to do an automatic "immutable flagging":
https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backu ... ml?ver=110

I've tested the theory:

1) Backup job to Win repo1
2) Backup copy to Win repo2
3) Disable Backup Copy job
4) Copy the files from Win repo2 to Linux Immutable Repo
5) Scan the Linux Imm repo
6) Remap Backup copy Job to use the files in the Linux Imm Repo
7) Checked the properties of the backup copy files in the console and it displayed the files as immutable, so without me doing chattr. Now, this could be a display thing, and the files aren't REALLY immutable, but for my use case it does not really matter since my customers know that starting date XX-XX-XXXX the new backup copies are immutable and the existing ones don't have to be. Even without doing chattr I could not delete the backup copies from within the Veeam console.

Once the mapped backup copy is used, the original one moves to Orphaned and can then be deleted .

Thanks for the input!

Cheers,

Michael

[dbearisto]

I am going to be doing something very similar to this. I also backup to tape and was wondering if anybody knows if this will in any way mess up the "backup chain" on the tapes. We have about a year's worth of backup history on the tapes and I don't want to risk losing this if doing the steps in the above post could in any way reset that backup chain, causing us to be unable to restore older data if needed.

Our daily backups currently backup to a QNAP device. We are going to be move all those backup files from the QNAP to a Linux Immutable Repo. We backup to disk first, then copy to a Nimble Storage device. Then the tape backup uses that to do it's daily backups, with a full backup every Saturday.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Darryn