Azure File Sync

[jandrewartha]

Gostev mentioned this in his weekly digest, I'd seen it before but my big question is how we'd back it up with Veeam, given there's only stubs on the local filesystem.

[Mike Resseler]

Hi Jandrewartha,

Today there is not really a possibility to back it up on the Azure side. In the future this might change but for now it is still best to have a copy somewhere and protect that with regular backup.

[Mike Resseler]

Maybe as an additional note. If you don't use cloud tiering, then you can simply backup the server that hosts the file sync. With cloud tiering, it works also but the backup might recall files that are in the cloud only when they need to be protected.

[Gostev]

Yeah, I am not sure why would anyone want to back one up on the Azure side anyway... I would just back up the file share itself with the file-level backup, such as the one we're currently building. This way, all new files (and all new versions of the existing backup files) will go into backup before some of them will get offloaded into Azure and replaced with stubs. So no files ever need to be recalled.

By the way, I would not use Azure File Sync without cloud tiering, because to me this is THE feature to use Azure File Sync for!!

[Mike Resseler]

I agree that cloud tiering is THE feature. And your strategy seems logical to protect it on the file-share itself. But that will only work with incremental forever or incremental with synthetic backups.

I am pretty sure files otherwise that some files will be recalled

But I am also convinced that people will want a backup on the cloud side (to another storage account in Azure) instead of a backup on-premises. One reason is not having the infrastructure for such a backup of files. Or maybe that place is the de facto place where the services get their data so the restore must be lighting fast so it can't come from on-premises. So I certainly will not say the other side backup is not needed. That is in my mind a wrong statement

[theta12]

We currently have all of our file servers on-site. We're looking into AFS to potentially help with some growth issues we have on Windows file servers by using the auto-tiering feature of Azure File Sync. The windows servers are all currently backed up with Veeam (31 day restore) using incremental with weekly, synthetic-full backups. I'm trying to determine if this would cause sync'd data in Azure to refresh when a backup is run or if there is a different methodology that we'd have to use when backing up these Windows file servers as to prevent the tiered data from being refreshed on the local server. I read this other thread (veeam-backup-replication-f2/azure-file-sync-t53746.html) but wasn't exactly sure if what I'm doing would suffice to keep the data from getting refreshed.

Is anyone else using this technology? How do you have it configured? Have you run into any issues with it?

[HannesK]

Hello,
I'm not using Azure File Sync but as long as you do block based backup (VM based, Agent Volume / Full computer) we don't touch files. So I do not expect that a recall would happen.

What I recommend is testing restoring the stub files. I did not test it, but probably it might also be a good idea to use the snapshots in Azure to protect the tiered data.

Best regards,
Hannes

[Mike Resseler]

@theta12,

The discussion in this forum is about file-based backups and which location they should be. In your case, you are protecting the VM "as-is" which means you will have incremental backups of that VM with an amount of stubs in, just as Hannes says. Which indeed means that some files might not be in any backup, just the stub.

Also, when you test the restores with datalabs (previously surebackup) there might be an issue. When you don't have access to the internet from that server, you will get the VM started but the AFS service will not be able to connect it's cloud tier and therefore give errors. Or it might have access and then you have multiple servers connecting to that share. So be aware of that and make sure you test it out with a dummy VM connected to a share with some dump files in it

Cheers
Mike

[hallsos]

Any updates on whether VEEAM will support backing up of a WIndows FIle server with cloud tiering enabled on Azure file sync, without pulling the cloud files back to on premises file server?

[HannesK]

Hello,
and welcome to the forums.

I moved your topic to the Azure file sync discussion. You can already backup the file server today without pulling the cloud files. Just use image based backup mode

Best regards,
Hannes

[jandrewartha]

I noticed in the v10a release notes it says:

Azure File Sync support with cloud tiering awareness for file backup jobs. Processing a file share with Azure File Sync enabled will now correctly back up files not present in the local cache. Such files will be backed up directly from Azure, without downloading them back to the file server.