Feature Request: Backup Locks

[RobMiller86]

Feature Request: Backup Locks

We have immutability, that’s great and has its uses. It’s a little complex to nail down the precise immutability period in its current form, but that sounds like it might be easier in v13.

However, even with easier immutability settings in v13, what I think we are currently lacking and would be a very useful feature, especially for larger teams, is the ability to set locks like how you can add a read only or delete lock on a resource in Azure and then remove it later. Immutability is a hard lock. There is no easy way with cloud providers to delete it for obvious reasons. If you write a backup with an immutability flag set to 15 years, you have it for 15 years.

Use Case: Customers who desire long-term retention but want to maintain some flexibility in case they want to change cloud providers, or simply delete backups that they previously felt had to be kept for far longer.

Example: Customer wants 15 years of VBR backups retained for all servers including deleted servers. We can set this now to use immutability in the capacity tier for recent backups, and then send GFS backups down to a mutable archive tier. Uncheck the box to remove deleted items and set job to retain 15 years GFS. Set SOBR to move old backups to capacity. That will work. But let’s imagine for a moment someone, somehow, makes a mistake and changes the GFS settings on the job, or checks the box to remove deleted items. Veeam will use its automation and start cleaning things up and long-term backups could be lost. Or perhaps someone doesn’t know or makes a mistake and manually deletes backups thinking they are only removing locally and not cloud or something like that. Mistakes happen, people don’t realize.

If we had a way to apply a lock at some level as an override, that would be completely separate from standard job settings, that would help immensely. I could see this not even being stored with the backup data, just a configuration in VBR. Even a simple global lock that says something like “any backup written can’t be deleted manually or via automation for X period of time”. That would be a separate settings area, where someone would need to deliberately go and change it to allow backups to be deleted in any manner. Make it painfully obvious they are about to allow the removal of backups. Allow the moving of backups as long as they aren’t being deleted, so offloading to capacity can still work, but they can’t delete the only known copy. Perhaps even have a separate password to access this area and give us a notes field to so we can tell them who to contact before turning this off. This would be a step between what we have now which is only 1 and 3:

Option 1: All backups can be deleted by any method at any time.
Option 2: New feature - Don’t let Veeam delete them manually or automatically for x period of time, but you can turn this on or off in a dedicated area.
Option 3: It’s immutable, you can’t change your mind later.

All it takes is one person to not understand settings that admittedly can be difficult for newer Veeam admins to fully grasp, that can cause mutable backups to be lost. It would be wonderful if we could have some settings at a global level on the VBR, to dictate certain policies. This would prevent a lot of mistakes I feel. If anyone has an idea that could help for these situations, I’m all ears. Thanks!

[HannesK]

Hello,
what if you use four-eyes authorization (12.1 feature)? Then it would need two people who need to make a mistake

Best regards,
Hannes

[RobMiller86]

Oh! Didn't know about this new feature. It's a step in right direction for sure. I'll have to change some processes around but this could definitely help. Thanks Hannes.