immutable backups V12

[jamerson]

Hi Guys,

we have been playing with V12 coupe of days now.

we have two offices and we have created a immutable backup on a ubuntu box

on the share we created two folders office 1 and office 2

the question is , does each office needs it own user to acess the veeam immutable folder ?
why i am asking is i cannot seems to get the backup working from the two offices with one user
keep getting this error.

Code: Select all

Cannot connect to target backup repository.
Cannot connect to target backup repository.
Cannot connect to target backup repository.
Cannot connect to target backup repository.
Cannot connect to target backup repository.
Cannot connect to target backup repository.
Failed to process Error: SSH credentials are not set for the host '
Task has been cancelled
Processing finished with errors at 2/22/2023 1:42:00 AM

[Ciso_2021]

I am trying to archief the same idea with 6 backups from different locations.

[Regnor]

Does each office have it's own VBR server? If so, that's not supported and you can only add the hardened repository to a single VBR instance.

[jamerson]

Each Office has own VEEAM Server and backup daily.
we do only copy the backup from office 1 of the ubuntu off site

this has worked before using a SMB connection.
what is the best way to have those offices copy theires backup to extern immutable backups?
it wil be costy to fire-up a ubuntu hardware for each office.

[Regnor]

Best would be if you were managing the backups of your offices remotely via a single Veeam installation. That way you won't have any problems with shared components and you would also have a central view of your backups.

Alternatively you could leave your setup as it is, but create remote backups from the VBR server which controls the hardened repository. This will of course depend on your bandwidth and amout of backup data.

[karsten123]

what about object storage?

[Ciso_2021]

Backup the VM over the wan it’s going to be a challenge as two offices has just 100/20.
Object storage has become very costly to buy, the management has decided to have one server for our office on the datacenter. Unfortunately the immutable isn’t for multiple VEEAMS.
I hope someone can / advise a idea to archief this

[jorgedlcruz]

Object Storage onprem, and affordable. Take a look at QNAP. Yes, the traditional NAS. They support AWS s3 compatible, and since November 2022, even immutability.

So having 2 QNAPS, one in each side. You can have different users, and buckets, for maximum security. One for your normal backup job, another bucket on the other site for backup copies.

If you have purchased the hardware, might be late, but leaving this here as reference.

I did a video this week about it https://youtu.be/EbTQLihEiII for the price of the units, and simplicity of use, QNAP has a lot to say on these environments

[Ciso_2021]

Thank you for your time and answer, what you’ve archieven with the Qnap is also possible with synology ?

[jorgedlcruz]

Not that I am aware, they have some Object Storage offering, but I think it is an as-a-Service or something.

[karsten123]

With Synology, the only way is e.g. minio docker.
Or C2 as Jorge said. But this is a cloud service.

[heinrichloewen]

@jorgedlcruz

Is QNAP safe? I remember a post from Anton Gostev where he warns about cheap NAS.

[jorgedlcruz]

Hello,
Well, it is as safe as it could be I guess. Probably Gostev was referring to SMB in general. But to be on the safe side you can always follow our Veeam Ready where we have a few models we tested, you can see the used hardware, etc.

As said before, make sure you follow the best practices in security for the QNAP like MFA, the less admins as possible, no cloud services, or cloud remote access enabled, etc.

There are other more Enterprise-ready implementations of the S3 protocol onprem, with more nodes for extra resilience and performance, etc. (Like Object-First, Scality, Cloudian, etc.)

A QNAP with proper RAID and nvme cache should be fine anyways

[Gostev]

Except I'm not aware of any QNAP with proper enterprise-grade RAID correct me if I'm wrong but I don't believe they use "unproper" RAID controllers even - it's all software RAID?

[LeoKurz]

Just another thing to remember. Immutability is not only ticking a checkbox on some kind of storage. The whole device needs to be immutable. No sense in using S3 with immutability when someone can gain access as root/admin to the whole box. With all the services and features of such a NAS and also with regular security problems reported for these boxes, I think it’s quite a challenge to really harden such a device.
Just my 5ct.
__Leo

[Gostev]

100%

[jorgedlcruz]

I have updated my post, so it is clear what I was trying to say regarding Enterprise-Ready Object Storage; QNAP is not as it is mainly single-server.

And yes, QNAP/Synology are software-raid (pros and cons here: pros as these are for backup, I do not think a physical hardware raid controller is required, in case the box fails the motherboard, plug the disks to another QNAP, even different model, and all is there. Even connect them to a Linux box.); the vulnerabilities have been by exposing the QNAP to the Internet, pretty much as the VMware, or if you expose any software to the public Internet.

Bear in mind I was recommending based on the deployment mentioned above. I think QNAP with S3 enabled and following the Veeam Ready for hardware/config recommendations could fit the mentioned scenario and, at the same time, get rid of the SMB it was mentioned without the "complexity" of installing/maintaining a Linux box which is not everyone cup of tea either.

[Gostev]

And yes, QNAP/Synology are software-raid (pros and cons here: pros as these are for backup, I do not think a physical hardware raid controller is required, in case the box fails the motherboard, plug the disks to another QNAP, even different model, and all is there.

The only question is what will be there without battery-backed write cache (BBWC) you are may have "minced meat" on that volume... especially with "sensitive" file systems like ReFS, which can be unmountable and unrecoverable. There is a number of such reports even here on these forums from people who tried to use ReFS on a customer-grade NAS, yet we literally never saw this happening on proper enterprise-grade storage hardware in Support to date... and we have plenty of enterprise customers with many PBs worth of ReFS repositories.

[jorgedlcruz]

Yes, I understand that. But I was referring this whole time to QNAP QuObjects - https://www.veeam.com/sys266 But I can honestly not say if the native s3 application is that sensitive, so it could have that "minced meat" you are referring to.

[JaySt]

imho, diving into the setup of Minio running on the ubuntu box (with proper hw raid, just skip the whole erasure coding thing) is your next best thing in this situation where you'd like to share the repository between multiple vbrs.
You get to use ubuntu, use your hardware you're happy with now, share it between multiple environments and have it all immutable.
Takes a little deepdive setting things up though...

[bostjanQ]

Hi there.
Luckily I came accross on this question while I am registered to newsletter: "Veeam R&D Forums Digest".
Btw, Gostev I really miss your monthly newsletters. :/

Question for others; I don't have experience with QNAP so far (I have worked only with NAS SYNOLOGY):
- is using S3 object store with QNAP any slower to save backups over network, or is the speed same as you would have NAS device (with same NIC speed)?

This QNAP thing and immutable backups really 'turned me on' considering switching from Nas Synology to QNAP.

[jorgedlcruz]

Hello Bostjan,
On my lab, which is a lab, with 10GbE, and NVMe Cache but sadly normal old SATA disks, speed is okay, but it could be better.
You can refer to known configs like here (RAID5, SSD, 10GbE, etc.) https://www.veeam.com/sys469 , or even look at the vendor-announced speeds (I mean, they do RAID 0 on 8xSSD, which is crazy and nobody should put backups on a RAID 0) https://www.qnap.com/en/software/quobjects

I think speed-wise, it might be quite similar to doing a Backup to a QNAP NFS, then to a QuObjects Bucket on the same NAS.

[CaliMSP]

bostjanQ

The speed with spinning disk is OK, but not that great unless you have a larger model with lots of disks in RAID10 and/or cashing/tiering with SSDs that are big enough to accommodate a full backup. An all SSD/NVME box will be fast, but not as fast as specialized flash storage from enterprise providers.

[bostjanQ]

Hi guys.
Thank you for your replies.

SPEED QUESTION
What I would like to achieve is to retain same backup speed over 10gig network.
If we compare backup repositories:
Backup repository scenario1:
Windows server with 10gig NIC and SSD disks;
Backup repository scenario2:
QNAP with 10gig NIC and install (only) SSD drives

The transfer speed would work the same in QNAP as it is on dedicated Windows server above for backup repository?

RAID QUESTION
In NAS synology backup repositorities as far as I can remember Synology uses its own 'raid type' array, I think it's called 'bfrs'.
Does QNAP also have its 'own type of raid' or only traditional RAID's 0,1,5,10,etc?

With best regards