Feature request: Archive Tier on block storage (XFS)

[mkretzer]

Hello,

in our Datacenter old storage systems often are used as "best effort backup repositories" to host backups that might be useful to have a longer retention on but where it would cost too much to purchase a dedicated system.
Currently we are decommissioning our old 600 TB primary backup system. Power-wise the system is still acceptable (many large drives) so we want to use it to hold part of our primary backups longer.

Problem is that the only way to do this with Veeam currently would be installing something like MinIO to use the Archive Tier functionality of SOBR.

It would be extremely useful if this archive tier functionality would be expanded to normal block (XFS) storage.

Markus

[Mildur]

Hi Markus,

Why not simply use a Backup Copy Job with long GFS retention on this repository machine?
That would also achieve your goal of keeping backups for a longer period.
Is there a specific reason it needs to be a Archive Tier in SOBR?

Best,
Fabian

[Gostev]

Hi, Markus. Both SOBR Capacity Tier and Archive Tier work in tandem leveraging object storage capabilities, so it's a basically a full redesign followed by a long stabilization cycle to swap object storage to XFS.

At the same time, Backup Copy jobs to normal XFS repository is already available today, the tech is solid and proven with time, so why do anything else in the first place?

P.S. Fabian beat me to that.

[mkretzer]

@Mildur Problem is our change rate is high. So we will loose the main benefit of only holding old backup points. For us that means we have the newest backups on the primary, copy and the "archive" system and we will loose much of its capacity.
With the requested feature it would be possible to optimally use a system as another layer of safety further reducing the need for tape restores.

Having the newest backup one more time is just wasteful and inefficient.

[mkretzer]

Does the new V13 feature help us here?
"You can now use Archive Tier with any type of Performance
or Capacity Tier in your Scale-Out Backup Repository, with all previous platform combination restrictions removed. This provides complete flexibility to design the backup archival solution irrespective of what storage type you are using for your other scale-out backup repository tiers."
This sounds to me like we can use block storage for archive tier!

[HannesK]

Hello,
"archive tier" is Amazon AWS Glacier / Azure Archive / Amazon S3 glacier compatible (tape) devices with Smart Object Storage API enabled. No block / NAS / whatever storage. It's the same as in V12

If you have something that can emulate S3 glacier from block storage, then this could be used. But that emulator also must emulate Smart Object Storage API to work with Veeam.

Best regards
Hannes

[mkretzer]

Hallo Hannes,

if its the same what's the new feature then?

Markus

[Gostev]

I'm really having a hard explaining it any differently than how it's already written in What's New, so it may sound repetitive.

A number of storage type combinations between Archive Tier and Performance/Capacity Tier were previously restricted. These restrictions were removed in V13, allowing ANY to Archive Tier SOBR configurations.

No changes in what storage types Archive Tier supports though.

[mkretzer]

Understood, thank you - it all makes sense now!