Cannot delete backup from performance tier even it's not immuable

[AlexandreD]

Hello,

We are a cloud service provider, and we are currently testing immutability on our infrastructure with the goal of enabling it for all our clients.

We mainly use backup copy jobs for the second copy. The issue with using backup copy jobs with immutability is that, regardless of the immutability period configured on the S3 repository, immutability will apply for the entire GFS retention period. If a client terminates their service, we would still retain their backups for 12 months (we use S3 compliance mode), which is unacceptable for us.

Therefore, we plan to deploy new SOBRs with a capacity tier (copy policy). Immutability will be enabled only on the capacity tier. This would allow us to enable immutability for all our clients without having to worry about retaining immutable data after a potential service termination, since GFS retentions in the capacity tier are not affected by short immutability periods.

During my tests, I noticed something: even though the performance tier is not immutable, it is not possible to delete a backup from the performance tier (via the Veeam console) until the end of the immutability

What is the technical explanation that requires us to keep the backup in the performance tier (not immutable) until the end of the immutability period (but i notice without 10 days block generation) ?

Thank you in advance,
Alexandre

[tyler.jurgens]

Have you looked into whether your S3 provider can support Governance mode immutability? Back when I was with a service provider that's how I tackled Immutability. The customer retains full immutability, but the SP still retains the ability to purge the backups if the customer leaves. Steve wrote a great post about it here: https://community.veeam.com/blogs-and-p ... art-7-6757

[AlexandreD]

I will provide more context : our immutability scenario concerns our shared hosting platform (VMware Cloud Director), where more and more customers are able to manage their first backup through the veeam plugin in VCD. We will operate with a capacity tier, so that the second backup copy is automatically created without having to recreate backup copy jobs.

We have more and more customers managing their backups autonomously in the vCloud Director portal with the veeam plugin. Using a capacity tier minimizes the risk of not being compliant on the second copy (Because the client cannot manage their second copy in the Veeam plugin). So we have to create a backup copy for each new customer job, with the same retention.

I considered this governance mode, our object storage is compatible. But as we manage object storage ourselves, and backups, we prefer to set the compliance mode and have a short immutability period.

Indeed, I had already read this very good article, which I have widely shared internally.
We strongly advise our customers subscribing to our object storage offer (on-premise customers backup to our object storage) to set the governance mode to avoid additional charges in case of cancellation. With our offer, the client pays per usage; as long as there is 1 GB in the bucket, they are charged. It's contractual.
We are adopting a different approach to our self-service backup offering.


Alexandre