My local Veeam contacts redirected me to this forum for my detailed questions about NAS/unstructured data backup in combination with object storage and immutability.
Thank you very much for your time and answers.
We have the following environment and requirements:
- CIFS/NAS backup (from an NetApp ONTAP system)
- object storage as target with object lock in compliance mode (direct backup to onprem S3)
- retention of several years
- immutability duration of around 60-90 days
- the above two points are possible so far with Dell NetWorker, there some kind of GFS logic is possible
- keep the last version of the file for up to 8 years instead of deleting it
We discovered that NAS backup behaves completely different in regards to immutablity when compared to VM backups.
As mentioned in the following links, the files are immutable for way longer than expected: <retentionperiod> + <immutabilityperiod> + <blockgeneration> (10d for general S3)
So if the customer wants 365 days of backups and a subset of 60 days to be immutable, then this is not possible. Then the immutability will be 365+60+10= 435 days!
See "Case 9" on the following page: https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/vbr/u ... =13#case_9
The immutability countdown for the backup files begins when Veeam Backup & Replication marks some old file versions and their data blocks for deletion, as per the backup job retention settings. Files and data blocks are deleted from the backup repository when their immutability lock is released.
https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/vbr/u ... tml?ver=13
Here are my questions:
1) Why is the immutability handled this way?
With the current implementation, the immutability feature is not useful at all. With such a long immutabilty, the storage is bound to get full.
2) In v13 we have two ways to configure the minimum immutablity on the repo: https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/vbr/u ... -retention
With my current understanding, there is no difference with NAS backup which settings is chosen regarding the immutability period. Can you confirm this?
3) What other way is available to implement the customer request?
4) To keep the last version of the file for up to 8 years:
Instead of deleting the last version, the customer wants the file to be transferred in another archive S3 bucket.
We don't want any recent or active files in the archive bucket and the files should not be immutable (the archive bucket does not have immutability configured)
With my understanding, this should be possible with the following settings (see screenshots). Can you please verify my understanding and config?
5) What happens if we extend/increase the immutability period of the S3 repo after the first full backup?
For the HLR, we found a statement that the immutability for the active chain is updated to reflect the new value.
So there the new value would be applied for the currently open chain, so for all restore points until the last synthetic full.
What is the logic for NAS backups to S3?
If you increase the immutability period in repository settings, a new value will be applied for the active and next chains.
https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/vbr/u ... tml?ver=13
