Use Amazon Storage.. really!

[Starman]

Using the Amazon storage Gateway is amazingly easy for throwing your backups to the cloud if you have good bandwidth (I actually do it over a 10/100 meg Comcast Coax connection).

* Download Amazon AWS gateway ($120 per instance a month). Its a VMware virtual machine appliance that literally just pops in and is controlled on the AWS site.
* Setup the local storage buffer large enough to take your biggest backup. The backup is as fast as local storage and then the AWS gateway sync's it up.
* follow simple setup instructions, map it as a iSCSI target to the AWS server (iSCSI taget it gives you) in your cloud.
* In Veeam map that drive as a target
* backup away to it.

Set AWS gateway bandwidth limits (I set mine to 2mb/sec so it doesn't saturate my connection).

5TB storage is something like $500 a month.

I also use this for storing my company read only archives. I have 1 million files at 1TB up there (ran about $100 a month), which ends up as an ISCSI target on the same server and then shared and sent out in DFS.

[veremin]

Hi, Todd,

Thank you for sharing valuable information with community; highly-appreciated.

[Gostev]

* Download Amazon AWS gateway ($120 per instance a month).

Depending on your deployment, Veeam B&R Cloud Edition might be a cheaper alternative to that... plus, you are not getting locked in with Amazon, and can change your cloud service provider as often as you like.

[tuscani]

I am interested in cloud storage, but how feasible is say running in Instant VM recovery from a cloud based backup? Have you tested this or file restores?

[Gostev]

Well, of course you would not be able to run VM across WAN from backup stored on Amazon cloud...
However, we did test in-cloud FLR (with Veeam server installed on Amazon VM), and it works reasonably well.

[tuscani]

So what if you lost the entire VM or LUN? I can see how individual file restores would be fine depending on size.. but seems anything else wold take forever to resotres back to your network.

[dellock6]

Depending on your line speed and size of the backup, you could also consider AWS Import/Export, sometimes it easier to wait 24 hrs for an USB disk coming via courier, than trying to download huge amounts of data. Even if not going to Amazon, it's a feature worth to check even in other cloud storage providers.

Luca.

[davidkillingsworth]

We use the Twin Strata Cloud Array virtual appliance, which sounds identical.

It is free up to 1TB volume for Veeam customers, beyond 1TB you can have a free 14 day trial.
See the free deal here: http://www.twinstrata.com/veeam-cloudarray-for-free

[cfvonner]

I'm wondering if anyone has tried or considered using Bitcasa? Backup to your normal on-site storage device, and set Bitcasa to mirror the backup folder? Or backup directly to the Bitcasa Infinite Drive (Bitcasa writes to a local disk cache then copies the file up to the cloud in the background)? Since Bitcasa is $99/year for unlimited cloud storage, it seems like an economical option. It's also very secure, as all data is encrypted before being sent to the cloud. I just don't know if it's viable with Veeam B&R.

-Carl

[rwoolley]

I realize this is an old post, but "Since Bitcasa is $99/year for unlimited cloud storage," seems like you may have missed a 9 or are quoting the monthly price. I just checked them out after landing on this thread looking at the v8 Cloud Connect stuff and their site says 999/yr. That's quite the difference in price if they've gone up by 10x in a little over 1 year.

EDIT -- holy crap, they did actually balloon up that much in a year... Sheesh.

http://www.engadget.com/2013/11/19/bitc ... ce-change/


so, no more 99/mo option for Infinite.

[cfvonner]

@rwoolley,

Yeah, the $99/year for unlimited was the going rate at the time I posted that. If you got in during the beta or immediately after the full release, you got grandfathered in to the $99/year unlimited plan. Otherwise, the price went up by a factor of 10 for unlimited storage. I think the main reason was that very few people were actually using more than 100GB of storage, so it made some business sense to charge a premium for those who really wanted to put TBs of data up there. Oh well...

-Carl

[dlamb33]

@starman...
You mentioned the Gateway VM just pops in and is managed on the AWS side. Could you elaborate a bit on that piece? Doesn't the VM reside in your vSphere environment? I really need some detailed steps on the VTL gateway config. Thanks so much in advance.

[infused]

Just bumping this.

I am seriously looking at the tape backup gateway using Glacier storage. 30TB seems to come in @ about $150/m + appliance cost. As long as you are not restoring huge amounts from this, it seems acceptable.

Is anyone using this with backup copies?

[Mike Resseler]

Hey Kirk,

I'm sure that those who are using this are use a backup job as a source. Statistics show us that most recoveries are done from within the first 30 days (with the most from within the first 7 days). After that (or a bit longer depending on the agreement they have with the company) they use a VM backup to tape or GFS backup to tape.

PS: since then, there is another VTL available from Starwind: https://www.starwindsoftware.com/starwi ... -for-veeam

[infused]

Thanks for that. Tape is ok. But I need another SAN/NAS/Tape driver for long term storage. For $150/m for 30TB, it kinda makes sense to look at these cloud options. We've only ever pulled back one backup from 1year+ in 5 years. So it's a good, cheap option to ship backups away for long term archival imo.

[Mike Resseler]

Hmm, yes, that was what I meant. When I talked about tape in this scenario I referred to VTL. Sorry, should have been more clearer (or waited longer to respond and have a few coffee's first )