Veeam v9 and StoreOnce Catalyst with HP Data Protector

[chjones]

I realize I may be a bit early in posting this, but I really want to use the new Catalyst Integration as soon as possible as our backup windows are creeping ever closer to our production windows, especially with large Exchange and SharePoint VMs (7TB plus each). I've also logged this via a Support Case with HP ... hoping to attack this from both ends.

We've been using Veeam with HP StoreOnce CIFS/NAS Shares for the better part of 2.5 years and it's been great, however the performance benefit of Catalyst Integration in v9 cannot be overlooked. We have just received the RTM build of Veeam v9 and have it successfully writing to a StoreOnce Catalyst Store. This integration is a very welcome addition Catalyst Performance is greatly increased. Approximately 2.5-3x faster to write a backup than a NAS Share.

We also backup a lot of physical servers and data at remote sites and use HP Data Protector for this. All of this other data is backed up to many StoreOnce devices around the country and replication is triggered by Data Protector using its Object Copy jobs and that instructs the StoreOnce's to replicate Catalyst Items using replication. This works beautifully, 100% automated, all we do is check job statuses.

With Veeam v9 now writing to a StoreOnce Catalyst Store, we are hoping there is a way to import those Catalyst Data Objects that Veeam writes into HP Data Protector so we can replicate the data just like everything else, and also write the data to tape using automated Object Copy jobs. Since we have some backups in Data Protector and some in Veeam we can't have two products trying to control same MSL4048 LTO6 LIbrary, and since Veeam can't touch the data from our physical and remote servers we need Data Protector to control the tape writing.

We've noticed that when Data Protector writes to a StoreOnce Catalyst Store the "Catalyst Item Name" as reported in the StoreOnce GUI is just an ID, liked 042c3c9f_5674ba9b_1fc8_0237. When Veeam writes to a Catalyst Store we seem items with the names of the actual Veeam Backup files, such as "|Backup Job Name|vmname.vm-#######-##-#######.vbk". Veeam obviously just writes the files directly to the Catalyst Store, which is fine.

There are commands to get Data Protector to import Items from a Catalyst Store, so it can then interact with them, which is what we are hoping to do. However, Data Protector errors when trying to import data written by Veeam to the Catalyst Store. If the Catalyst Item was written by Data Protector we can import fine, but not if it was written by Veeam. I understand this may be Data Protector's problem, but hoping there may be something we can do from our end?

Is anyone aware of any way to get another product to work with files that Veeam has written to a StoreOnce? There are a lot of people I can see on the forums that integrate their Veeam Backups with other products (NetBackup for example). Since Veeam and Data Protector both now work natively with Catalyst Stores we're hoping there is a way to pass data from Veeam over to Data Protector.

Is there, or will there be, any way to import data that Veeam has written to a StoreOnce Catalyst Store into Data Protector so we can then carry out operations on that data?

[foggy]

Chris, currently only Veeam B&R is able to use objects it creates on a Catalyst Store. This is a question of API compatibility between Veeam B&R and other Catalyst clients that should be enhanced further down the road.

[Gostev]

Chris - knowing how some internals work, I don't think you should expect Data Protector supporting the import of Veeam backup files any time soon. In short, there are special API calls required to read metadata section of Veeam backup files. And without taking care of those, you will never be able to read the entire file.

Now, of course it is doable - but realistically, I doubt Data Protector team will be interested in spending time on such a highly specialized development around Veeam workloads, since we happen to be their competitor

Thanks!

[chjones]

Thanks Alexander and Anton. I agree about it being unlikely that Data Protector will be updated to support Veeam Files on a Catalyst Store. At the end of the day tho, there is just a file on a Catalyst Store. Data Protector doesn't need to know about the contents of the VBK, or what the file is, we just need it to initiate a job based on that file so we can do something with it. For now we will likely have to stick with backing up to a StoreOnce NAS share and then having Data Protector backup the files across a WAN to Catalyst Store at the remote site (using Server-Side Dedupe on the StoreOnce gateway so only unique blocks are transferred).

I was hoping with Veeam obviously having to obey the rules of StoreOnce Catalyst and how to structure and write data that Data Protector would follow the same logic and so whilst not being able to read inside the data written, could at least see there is an object there. I've worked with the HP Data Protector and StoreOnce teams before via their tech support and the Data Protector team isn't the most willing to help support environments that incorporate other products. Hopefully one day

Thanks.

[Gostev]

Well, we'll see how it goes... I can tell you this topic is already being discussed within HP

[Markus.K1985]

We have the same goal as chjones.

Using another product like DataProtector for further processing is one option. The other option is, that VEEAM natively supports StoreOnce Replication... But then Tape needs to be handled by VEEAM.

[pirx]

So Veeam does support StoreOnce Catalyst now, but not Catalyst Replication? That would be a bummer.

[Gostev]

We recommend using Backup Copy jobs instead of storage-based replication, because the latter is not content aware and will replicate bad data just as well as it replicates good data. We've seen this approach failing our uses too many times, often resulting in irreversible data loss.

[pirx]

I've not looked into Veeam's backup copy, but we are currently using another backup application with it's copy feature and want to get rid of this kind of copy jobs. It's a question of performance, time and budget. Not sure how Veeam backup copy works compared to the deduplicated Catalyst replication in StoreOnce. Our very simple idea for a new backup concept is to deploy two StoreOnce devices at two loactions and replicate the backups. First with the current backup app, later with a new one (probably Veeam for VMs).

[foggy]

You can pick up the concept of Veeam B&R backup copy jobs in the corresponding user guide section.

[pirx]

We recommend using Backup Copy jobs instead of storage-based replication, because the latter is not content aware and will replicate bad data just as well as it replicates good data. We've seen this approach failing our uses too many times, often resulting in irreversible data loss.

From the manual I see that a Backup Copy is taken from the source backup repository to the target backup repository. Isn't that basically the same what StoreOnce Catalyst Replication is doing too?

[chrisdearden]

not quite. The storage replication is doing just that ( replicating the storage ). Copy job actually act more like a primary job , except that the source is the primary backups , rather than the production virtual machines.