[FEATURE REQUEST] Veeam Cloud - Replicate Current Chain Only

[khauschildt]

Hello,

I would like to request a feature for Veeam Cloud Backup (VCB).

VCB, as best I know, is meant for offsite replication for disaster recovery...in case of server room fire, there will still be a current copy of backups off site in cloud storage. I only need to be able to restore from the most current chain from the cloud. In all day-to-day restores I'll be restoring from the local Veeam chains on our SAN. Issue is, VCB can only replicate an entire folder of Veeam backups to the cloud. If Veeam is configured to take weekly or monthly chains and I have (for example) 5 chains of Veeam backups on a local SAN, there is no way to tell VCB to only push the current chain to cloud storage. I end up pushing 5 sets of VBK/VIB files to the cloud. Each set is 1 TB, so I keep 5 TB to cloud storage when I only need to keep 1 TB. This results in a $500 monthly Azure/S3 bill when it need only be a $100 monthly bill.

The feature request is for VCB to have an option to only replicate the current chain to cloud storage, and purge the old chain from cloud storage once a new chain is replicated. Another option would be to have VCB only replicate the latest X restore points, and let the person configuring VCB manage what that maps to chain-wise. A third, and very simple option, would be to add an option to VCB to only backup files that were created/modified X days or less ago and purge files older than that.

Please note the purge option in the new backup job wizard of VCB (VCB User Guide P. 33) deals with previous versions of files and won't matter to the Veeam folder. I troubleshot this issue with Joseph in case 00492185, he ultimately suggested I post a feature request here.

Thank you,

khauschildt

[Gostev]

Hello, this may work for you even with the current version. Thanks!

[khauschildt]

Hello Gostev,

Unfortunately block level backups won't help our situation--the vast majority of data comes from the new full with each new chain, the incrementals are fairly small. If VCB had an option to replicate only the current chain (or X restore points) (or files newer than X days) to the cloud storage provider, this would reduce our monthly Azure/S3 bill to a fraction of what we're currently paying without compromising our ability to recover from a disaster such as a server room fire.

Thank you,

Kyler

[dellock6]

Have you thought about using AWS EC2 instead, if it better fit your need?
You can deploy the WAN acceleration feature of Veeam into a Windows machine in Amazon EC2, map an S3 bucket as a secondary disk into this virtual machine, and run backup copy jobs towards this machine. By keeping only the last 1 version of the job, you are almost achieveing what you are looking for.

Luca.

[khauschildt]

Hey Luca,

I appreciate the response. That is an option I have not considered. The first hurdle that comes to mind though, is that we are managing the Veeam + cloud storage backup solutions for a number of clients, so that would involve spinning up an EC2 server for each managed client, as well as the overhead of maintaining the cloud server and trying to setup some type of reporting on the EC2 server>S3 mapped bucket>custom powershell replication script daisy chain for each client. Adding an additional Advanced Filter to VCB suggested above seems to be the most straight-shot solution to the problem.

Best regards,

khauschildt

[dellock6]

You are right, if your solution involves multiple clients to be managed, for sure the EC2 version is adding more complexity.
A suggested solution for Veeam could be to be able to share the same WAN accelerator for multiple clients, each with only access to their own remote repository. for service providers it would be a nice addition.

Luca.