Data Domain replication support

[stewsie]

I heard that Data Domain replication will be supported by Veeam in a future release. Is this also included in Veeam v12a?

We are interested in this feature as the copy job performance and tape performance are very slow using the DD. I do have a support call open for this but am interested if we could at least remove the copy jobs by using the replication in the DD

Thanks

[pmichelli]

Why not setup replication at the DD level and bypass Veeam. I do this for a few reasons but the main one is this :

Veeam is not aware of the second DD appliance. If something bad happened and we get hacked and someone managed to breach Veeam and erase the main data domain, you still have a chance to recover all your data from the second one.

You just need to make the replication mtree an active DD Boost unit and mount it to Veeam, rescan and you get your data back.

For an extra level of protection, you can do a filesystem fast copy on the second DD to give you some immutability. In the event the primary gets wiped and it syncs those changes to its replication partner, the fast copy you took will save you because the data is still available to you.

Cumbersome yes, I have to do manual fast copies on my second DD every week (just set a calendar reminder). My understanding is V12a coming in Q4 will address the immutability portion.

Just some ideas for you. It works well for us and I can sleep much better at night

[rennerstefan]

Hi all,

what I can say atm is that we will not deliver native support in Veeam Backup & Replication 12a.
As already mentioned above you can already use mtree replication with Veeam being unaware of it but there are some settings you need to set to avoid issues with the replication once Veeam starts changing and overwriting existing data.
We are checking right now if the settings we have are still valid and update this thread soon.

Thanks

[rennerstefan]

Hi again,

as mentioned before, you can setup MTREE replication on the DD level and yes, Veeam will not be aware of the second site which means you need to take care of adding that site to Veeam and rescan it once needed.

In addition, there is one very important thing to be aware of. As we change existing files during e.g. synthetic processing on the primary DD, you need to make sure no replication is running while Veeam is running backups to that specific MTREE. Otherwise, it can cause issues as we may change the file after you replicated it and during recovery you access the wrong data point. We recommend to create a cron Job on the DD that disables the replication before Veeam backups start and enables it to replicate after the Veeam backup is finished.

Additionally, there was a defect a while ago in the DD OS which could cause panic.
Only applies to older OS versions but still worth to have a look:
https://www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/de-d ... orage-unit

Hope that helps.

Thanks a lot

[pmichelli]

Hi Stefan

Thank you. If the DD are set to replicate every 15 min, would this still be needed? I understand things may change when the synthetics are running but should it not all sync back to "normal" 15 minutes after the backup job has ended?