Copy Job to Immutable Repo on Synology

[damiengm]

Hi
Running v12, and I want to use Immutable Repos now. We back up to Synology NAS, and now in their software they offer WriteOnce features on their SMB shares. Options available to the WriteOnce is permanent lock, and an Auto Lock where we can set the period that a file is writable before being locked, and a retention period before again becoming writeable. There is also a Lock state where you have the option to append to existing files only (or standard immutable status)

Given that, things I am considering is

a) a new Repo, which is just an SMB share to Veeam, Since its a SMB share I can't use the Linux Hardened Repo setup. Unsure how Veeam will like some meta files to edit if they are locked?

b) Copy Job:.. no longer thinking about migrating an existing job into this, but creating a new copy job to use this new Repo.. Job would be say keep the last 7 days and incremental.

c) Auto Lock period and Retention period on the NAS. Do I need a grace period for files (granularity is in hours and days), and Retention period longer or shorter than my Job retention period? I am trying to think what Veeam does on day 8 when it discards the old backup, there seems to be mergers happening and old incremental backups to delete, no?

Regards
Damien

[Andreas Neufert]

Non Veeam managed WORM/Immutability need to be transparent in the processing to us.
For example when your storage system can make a snapshot immutable while we can delete files on the share/volume.
The reason for this is that we actively working with out backup files and monitor things. For example when we can not delete a backup file that is due to retention, we will mark the backup chain to "repair" mode until we can heal the situation. No new backups can be made to the chain. Of cause you can start a new chain with an Active Full, but then you have to manually remove over time the Veeam backups.

Another issue is that the external immutability in you case do not know/cover dependencies between backup files in chains. So it might be the case depending on what you setup that needed backup files are not protected.

With your setup everything works fine until the point it does not and the only option for you from there is to create new backup chains and delete old backups manually. You need to have the space for this and resources to do so.

I suggest to look into one of the official Veeam Immutability supported storages. Veeam has an own "Hardened Repository" option, that can be installed on a normal server which likely is in a price range with the synology anyway. Or use a storage system where the WORM/immutability is transparent to the workload (can protect snapshots with immutability without blocking the deletion on the main volume/share.)

[damiengm]

Thanks, so it seems that won't be a solution for us atm. Synology also has immutable snapshots so I may look into that.