GFS to Cloud

[RockfordBP]

Hi all,

Looking for some advice/direction in regard to GFS backups. We are currently doing a couple of Pilot sites to test our new global configuration. One of the aims is to move from Tape to Object storage. I’ve set up the SOBR and that is all working well. But I am struggling to understand how to implement GFS straight to Object Storage as the servers previously used with Tape drives don’t have the necessary storage to have backups + weeklies + monthlys etc on them. So, I want to have them go direct to Azure but am not sure how to do it.

Like I understand that a normal full backup just gets tagged with W or M but I guess it needs to do it locally and then go from there. Or do I do a totally separate backup for this sort of thing? Friday Full to local storage and then a GFS Weekly to Azure the next day on Saturday? If that is the case how do I tell the Backup Job to do that?

I was going to create a ticket, but I don’t think this is the sort of thing they do? I probably need more of a Veeam Consultant I guess?

[Mildur]

Hello David

Ticket is not required for HowTo questions. But if you are talking about a global backup strategy/design, I recommend to work together with a Veeam partner/consultant. You may look up one (a VASP) in our partner directory:
https://www.veeam.com/find-partner.html?type=VASP

There are two options:
SOBR: Backups must first be stored on local disk before they can be moved to Azure.
Direct copy to Azure: Backup copies can be directly stored on Azure without using a local repository.

You could use "Direct copy to Azure" and run the backup copy job to Azure on a weekly interval. Backups on object storage are forever incremental. Each GFS backup upload will only be changed or new blocks compared to the previous GFS backup.
I recommend to consider a daily copy. New or changed blocks may still uploaded to Azure at the end of the week as part of the weekly upload.

servers previously used with Tape drives don’t have the necessary storage to have backups + weeklies + monthlys etc on them

What type of machines are these? If you use them as hardened repositories or windows based reFS repositories, you can leverage FastClone. Synthentic full backups will be almost space less because of block cloning space savings.

Best,
Fabian


Best,
Fabian