This article refers to Veeam Backup & Replication v10 which is not Veeam's latest, in case your server is running v11, please refer to the v11 article.

Zadara is Veeam Ready and is a Pro Partner within Veeam's Technology Alliance Program. We work closely together, to ensure seamless performance and compatibility between Veeam software and Zadara storage.

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The objective of this article is to cover the steps required for creating a Veeam Scale-Out-Backup-Repository, that leverages Zadara's for both Performance & Capacity tiers.

The steps outlined below requires Veeam Backup & Replication v10, Capacity tier will take advantage of the Object Storage S3 Immutability APIs (this can be controlled by the Veeam backup administrator).

Zadara have announced its support of Object Storage immutability in version 20.01. Previous Object Storage version will not support it. 

Overview

The scale‐out backup repository is a logical grouping of storage extents which provides flexibility and scale-ability in defining a backup target. One or more backup repositories can be used as extents for the scale‐out backup repository, and different types of backup repositories can be used as well. The object repository, is used for S3‐compatible storage. This repository is unique in that it provides a capacity tier for the scale‐out backup repository which can be used to archive backup chains to more economic storage.

The following steps will be covered: 

1. Performance tier - creating the Backup repository.
2. Capacity tier - creating the Object Storage repository.
3. Scale-Out-Backup-Repository (SOBR) configuration.
4. Create a Backup job.

Performance tier

In this example, we will utilize an ReFS disk that is exposed directly to the Veeam Backup & Replication v10 VM.

Once the disk is formatted and ready to use, open the Veeam Backup & Replication console and navigate to the "Backup Infrastructure" view.

• Right click the "Backup repositories" and choose "Add backup repository"
  
• Select "Direct Attached Storage" , and Microsoft WIndows on the following screen.
• In the New Backup Repository wizard, name the Backup Repository.
  
• Populate the server repositories, and select the new disk you have just created.
  
• Approve the repository location, and click next.
• In the Repository section, it is recommended to have a fixed limit for the maximum concurrent tasks. unchecking the option may lead to "unlimited" connections which could be counter-productive when large number of backup chains are being offloaded. 
  
  From the object storage perspective (Capacity tier), each task handles 64 TCP connections (overall of 256 for 4 tasks). It is important to revisit this configuration in a setup with multiple performance tier extents.
  
  
• Complete the the wizard and apply the new backup repository creation
  
• Once prompted, do not change the default backup repository.
  

Capacity tier

Note - in order to leverage the immutability capabilities, ensure you have enabled the feature on the Zadara Object Storage target container, in order enable it, follow the instructions provided in Zadara VPSA Object Storage user guide -http://guides.zadarastorage.com/zios-guide/2001/appendix-c-object-storage-immutability.html 

Connectivity information

For Object Storage connectivity, it is required to gather the following information from the VPSA Object Storage management UI:

1. VPSA Object Storage Endpoint
2. VPSA Object Storage region. (Veeam v10 B&R console will not accept upper case letters in the region name, as the VPSA Object Storage defaults to region "US" contact your Object Storage administrator in order to change it)
3. S3 API Access Key/Secret Key

From the VPSA Object Storage GUI, navigate to the User Information section (top right corner, by clicking the logged in username).

 Creating the Object Storage repository

• Open the Veeam Backup & Replication console and navigate to the "Backup Infrastructure" view.
• Right click the "Backup repositories" and choose "Add backup repository"
• Select "Object Storage" 
  
• Choose S3 compatible storage
  
• In the New Backup Repository wizard, name the Object Repository
  
• Inset the connectivity information, as collected earlier from the VPSA Object Storage management interface(service endpoint, Region, Credentials).
  
• In the bucket section, select the bucket you have created earlier, along with the backup folder (a folder can be created directly from the wizard context); Check the "Make recent backups immutable for: X days" if you wish to protect recent backups from modification or deletion by ransomware, malicious activity.
  
• Review the configuration, and finish the Object Storage backup repository.
  

Scale-Out-Backup-Repository (SOBR)

Now that we have both Performance and Capacity tiers in place, we can configure the SOBR.

• Open the Veeam Backup & Replication console and navigate to the "Backup Infrastructure" view.
• Right click the "Scale-out Repositories" and choose "Add scale-out backup repository..."
  
• Name the Scale-out repository, and click Next.
  
• Add the performance tier, click on "Next"
  
  
  
• Confirm the Placement policy.
• Add the Object storage repository as the Capacity tier.
  
  You may want to Encrypt the data uploaded to object storage by checking the "Encrypt data uploaded to object storage" checkbox.
• Review the configuration, and approve its creation.
  

Create a Backup job

 Finally, we can create a backup job that will be utilizing the Scale-out backup repository we have created.

• Open the Veeam Backup & Replication console and navigate to the "Home" view.
• Right click the "Jobs" option, and choose "Backup - > Virtual Machine.."
  
• Select the VM(s) you'd like to backup.
• Under the storage section, Backup repository - select the SOBR that was recently created. 
  
• Confirm the rest of the steps, review the job configuration, and Finish its creation.
  
• That's it, the backup job in place and your data is being backed up!
  
   

Fine-Tuning

The following Windows Registry key may need to be updated to adjust the number of concurrent connections for better performance.  The value of this key is read only when the job starts.

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Veeam\Veeam Backup and Replication\S3ConcurrentTaskLimit

The default value of 64 (decimal) is applied to every worker process, meaning that the backup job overall may be using hundreds or thousands of concurrent connections, resulting in sub-optimal performance.  Try adjusting this to a low value initially, eg 2, and adjusting it upwards until optimal performance is achieved.

Got a question? Want to learn more about how to leverage your backup solution? We love to help. Send us a mail to support@zadarastorage.com.