Feature request // Please provide the ability to consciously disable SOBR Immutability enforcement

[massimiliano.rizzi]

Hello experts and good day,

please consider the scenario below as part of a backup infrastructure refresh project:

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- Windows server 1 is a physical Windows Repository server running Windows Server 2012 that is about to be decommissioned
- Windows server 1 non-Hardened Veeam Backup Repository is currently an existing SOBR performance tier extent which has a Capacity Tier backed by an Object Storage repository
- We would like to add a Hardened Veeam Backup Repository to the same SOBR as a new performance tier extent, then evacuate the backups from the existing SOBR extent backed by Windows Repository server, however since 12.1 we cannot use mixed configuration and have only one extent with immutability enabled
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Is there any workaround considering that the existing SOBR has a Capacity Tier backed by an Object Storage repository ? Our main goal here is to preserve the backups on the Capacity Tier backed by the Object Storage repository (or in other words, being able to keep the existing chains on the Capacity Tier without re-seeding them). Being able to preserve the existing chains on the Capacity Tier is the most important thing, so it is ok for us to start new chains on prem on the hardened repository if needed.

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks !

Massimiliano

[HannesK]

Hello,
yes, we stopped that mixing of immutable / non-immutable extents because it leads to a bunch of problems on how the software should work in "corner case" situations (e.g. evacuations). While it might looks "easy" with only two extents, we had customers doing mix- and match with dozens of extents.

If you have all data in capacity tier, then you could remove the Windows machine from performance tier and add Hardened Repository at the same time (there is a message screen that explains it when you remove the last performance extent). Then you can either start a new full backup on Hardened Repository (probably the easiest way) or download the latest chain first from capacity tier.

If you want to download, then keep in mind that reflink / fastclone is not used and you might be interested in Start-VBRDownloadBackup because the console does not allow multi-select for downloads

Best regards,
Hannes

[massimiliano.rizzi]

If you have all data in capacity tier, then you could remove the Windows machine from performance tier and add Hardened Repository at the same time (there is a message screen that explains it when you remove the last performance extent). Then you can either start a new full backup on Hardened Repository (probably the easiest way) or download the latest chain first from capacity tier.

Hello Hannes,

thanks a lot for your reply and for the information !

That is exactly what I needed to do.

Best regards,
Massimiliano