Disk restore from NetApp storage snapshots?

[nhwanderer]

We use NetApp storage snapshots as part of our backup strategy with Veeam. They're integrated with the Veeam B&R console. We can do instant VM recovery and file level restore from them, but can't do disk recovery. Am I missing somthing, or is that not currently possible?

I can work around this easily enough by just restoring a disk from snapshot inside if VMWare (tried and worked), but it worries me this will foul up CBT and potentially corrupt our Backup and Replication task unless I reset CBT it if I do a disk restore from storage snapshots.

Why restore a disk from storage snapshots? Since the VMWare ID doesn't change, Veeam doesn't have to start a whole new backup. Also, it's one of my ransomware recovery ideas. Our file servers have different shares on different disks, so if one gets corrupted, encrypted, etc., I can restore the individual disk rather than the whole machine. We take NetApp snapshots hourly, but do replication/backup daily.

I can't wait until Veeam does NAS backup, since I would way prefer to use the NetApps to share files directly rather than use Windows file server on top of VMDKs, but how it does it will affect our decision to use it. We have high file counts for the amount of storage we have, so once of the advantage of using Veeam and Windows File Servers is that block level restores are much faster than file level restores.

Thanks!

[foggy]

Hi Jordan, VM disk restore (as well as full VM restore) from storage snapshots is not currently available.

[chjones]

ONTAP can already protect NAS workloads for you through Snapshot Schedules, and then SnapMirror and/or SnapVault to another ONTAP system or Cloud Gateway (AltaVault). You can create FlexClone volumes from the snapshots and present them out and recover data. You can use Previous Versions (if using CIFS) or browse the .snapshot directory (for NFS) to recover data. You can also use ONTAP to recover individual files from replicated snapshots. Is this not sufficient?

I agree it would be nice to have all of those controlled from a central point, such as Veeam. But I see one of the issues being that Veeam is not aware of the data inside the volume (unlike with VMs on a datastore). Veeam, I guess, could mount and catalog the NAS volume snapshot, but is that really worth it?