[Feature Request] Archive tier copy mode and vib processing

[bct44]

Hello,

I'm in the process of centralising backups of hundreds of ROBO to an object storage in DC. We have both bucket for standard class and glacier class.
For security compliance, it will be amazing if the archive tier could have a copy mode like the capacity tier.

What are the limits to restricting only GFS FULL points for archiver tier? Specially on premise we don't have any cost and this archive tier comes obviously with time to wait during the retrieval process.

[HannesK]

Hello,
the reason is, that standard class is using small objects (few hundred KB on average with default settings) which makes it more space efficient for short retentions.

GFS fulls in archive tier / glacier class are larger objects (hundreds of MB). They are converted from smaller objects. Small objects would "kill" your archive tier, because it's backed by tape as far as I remember.

Technically we could also convert small objects for incremental backups if we would always do "active full" to archive tier (which requires much more space than on performance / capacity tier). It would require significant re-architecture of the product. Let's see how many other customers are asking for this scenario.

Best regards,
Hannes

[bct44]

Hello Hannes,

Thank you for the complete answer, could you explain why it woull kill the archiver tier? Do you mean related to performance or how the hardware solution stored metadata? I know the limitations from LTO drives too.
I hope some other customers will have the need, for me it makes sense to have the entire backup chains on long term object storage as we do for basic tape processing with veeam.

What about the first feature request for copy mode?

[HannesK]

Hello,
because tapes cannot handle hundreds of millions of small files as far as I know

copy mode: the problem is the small objects. I don't see that working from a physical point of view. It needs to be converted to larger objects which has it's downsides and would require "active full" because one cannot "merge" on tapes

Best regards,
Hannes

[bct44]

Hannes, thank you for the explanation! I will ask the question to my hardware vendor about limit of files on tape, i will let you know.

For copy mode: OK, for the time being we won't take the vib part into account for this mode, but I already wanted to have a copy of the gfs/vbk point.