KB4364 appears to be inaccurate as it is currently written

[dcolpitts]

FYI - someone needs to tell the KB team that KB4364 is inaccurate as it is currently written…

It states:

Cause

This error message indicates that the StoreOnce Catalyst repository being used by the job does not have block alignment enabled, likely because it was created by a version of Veeam Backup & Replication prior to 12, when the option was disabled by default.

Starting with StoreOnce firmware version 4.3.2, HPE provided the ability to enable fixed block chunking on a Catalyst Store to improve incremental backup and synthetic full performance for backup files pre-aligned by Veeam Backup & Replication. This functionality is supported starting in Veeam Backup & Replication 11, and requires that block alignment be enabled for the StoreOnce Catalyst repository.

Solution

To enable support for fixed block chunking in StoreOnce firmware 4.3.2+:

• For Veeam Backup & Replication 11, edit the StoreOnce repository and manually enable the Align backup file data blocks option.
• For Veeam Backup & Replication 12 or higher, edit the StoreOnce repository and click Next through each of the repository wizard pages. Veeam Backup & Replication will automatically update the repository settings to match the StoreOnce required settings.

Except all this does is run the wizard in VBR. It does absolutely nothing to the Catalyst store itself. And if you look at the Catalyst store, it is NOT possible to enable "Enforce Fix Block Chunking" after it is created, regardless of the Primary Transfer Policy on an existing store.

The StoreOnce documentation clearly states:

Veeam Fixed Block Chunking: Veeam Aligned Data Performance Optimization. This setting improves the performance of certain Veeam VM backup workloads.
NOTE: This setting is only available upon store creation. Existing catalyst stores cannot be modified to enforce fixed block chunking. This setting is also only applicable to Low Bandwidth transfer policies.

Yet the author of KB4364 states (at least the way the article is written, and taken out of context) that all that needs done is to run the wizard in VBR (and it will update the StoreOnce firmware) and fails to mention anything needs done or checked on the StoreOnce.

Perhaps the article should be updated to state "To enable VBR support for fixed block chunking on a StoreOnce Catalyst Store (for firmware 4.3.2+) where fixed block chunking is already enabled on the store, perform the following step(s) depending on your Veeam version:"

Just my two cents worth here...

dcc

[tpayton]

Thank you for your feedback.

I wrote the article from the view of a customer who already enabled the option during Catalyst Store creation and has jobs failing with the errors listed in the Challenge section.

I can see where the wording can be a tad confusing and will work on updating the article further to clarify that this article discusses changes that must occur on the Veeam Backup & Replication side to account for the configuration of the Catalyst store.

The errors listed in the KB will not occur if the StoreOnce Repository was initially created while using Veeam Backup & Replication 12 because, in v12, the default setting is to have "Align backup file data blocks" enabled.

The article is only relevant to a particular situation wherein a customer creates the StoreOnce Repository in Veeam Backup & Replication 11a or older and did not enable "Align backup file data blocks" (because it is disabled by default in v11) or they created it in v11 and updated to Veeam Backup & Replication 12.

In the future, if you'd like to share your feedback with the KB Article Management (KBAM ) team directly, please utilize the Send Article Feedback link found at the bottom of every KB.

[dcolpitts]

Hey Tyler - thanks. Yes I realize it's written in the context of resolving the stated error, thus the reason I said if taken out of context and all someone reads is "To enable support for fixed block chunking in StoreOnce firmware 4.3.2+:"... And thus my suggestion of changing it to: "To enable VBR support for fixed block chunking on a StoreOnce Catalyst Store (for firmware 4.3.2+) where fixed block chunking is already enabled on the store, perform the following step(s) depending on your Veeam version:"

Anyways - all good.

Thanks

dcc