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NAS backup – GFS to Tape

Many customers and partners ask whether it is possible to implement a GFS (Grandfather – Father – Son) type of protection policy when the data to be protected pertains to a NAS (Network network-attached storage) and the destination is a tape library.

Such automation with the current version of Veeam Backup & Replication(VBR) 12.1 is not yet available, something that is already possible when the data source is a backup of VMs and Physical Servers.

In this first article, I will help you achieve that goal by taking advantage of VBR ‘s great flexibility in creating backup jobs.

Note1: In the next one I will illustrate how to make GFS copies by exploiting a little-known feature of
VBR
, the Tape Copy.

Flexibility of Backup Jobs:

a. VBR manages tapes using an architecture that is based on:

  • Media Pool(MP) are the logical containers of the tapes and can pertain to one or more Backup jobs (in our scenario we will create one MP per Job).
  • Media Set(MS) identifies the restore points present on the tape (in our scenario we will create one MS per Backup job per single tape).

b. The proposed solution is to create weekly, monthly, and annual backup jobs in full mode. These backups should be created on a specific date and the backups should reside on tape pools created for the purpose.

Let’s see step by step how to proceed:

c. Creation of weekly and monthly Media Pools(MP).

Picture 1

From image 2 it is important to note that a new tape will be used for each backup session.

picture 2

Image 3 shows how to set the retention, which in this scenario is 4 weeks.

Picture 3

For the Monthly MP, the same procedure is used, changing the retention to 12 months (see images 4,5,6).

Picture 4

Picture 5

Image 6 shows that the retention for Full Months is 12 months.

Picture 6

d. Creating Backup Jobs

Picture 7

image 8

Image 9 highlights the scheduling of the Backup job.

The assumption is to make n full backup jobs for each GFS policy.

Our example scenario shows the first week’s job (blue arrow) with weekly retention (green arrow). For the second, third, and subsequent week, we will proceed in a completely similar way, replacing the value first with second, third, etc. under “Run the full backup automatically.”

Image 9

Image 10 highlights (orange arrow) that no incremental backups will be initiated.

image 10

The same steps must be implemented to create monthly type GFS backups, in the example I set the backup job start on the 4th Saturday of the month (image 12 – blue arrow).

Image 11

Image 12

Image 13

Note 2:

  • Licensing counts licenses per individual Backup job (verision 12.1).
  • Conduct tests to make sure the scenario matches your needs. Get help from Veeam support.

In the next article, we will see how to use the Tape Copy feature.

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Enterprise Manager – Delegation of Restores

An article devoted to how you can delegate restores with Veeam Backup & Replication (VBR).

The case study is related to the protection of files in shared folders, but can be extended to many of the objects protected with VBR. (see image 7)

—

  1. Image 1 shows the three shared network folders (SHARE-A, SHARE-B, SHARE-C) that are used as the source of the files to be protected.

share-sourcePicture 1

In the scenario, it is assumed that for each individual shared folder, only a specific user can proceed with the recovery tasks.

  1. Image 2 highlights the creation of three Domain users, ShareA, ShareB, ShareC.

users-ADpicture 2

Files pertaining to a specific shared folder will be restorable by the user with the identical ending letter in the name. For example, files pertaining to SHARE-A will be restorable by the ShareA user.

(
Editor’s note: For simplicity of exposition, the letter X will replace one of the three letters of the alphabet A-B-C)

  1. A Backup job named “BkF-Share-X” was created for each shared folder.

Image 3 shows that the “BKF-Share-A” job (orange arrow) protects the entire SHARE-A (Blue arrow).

Picture 3

  1. Image 4 highlights the “configuration” menu from the Enterprise Manager.

Administration credentials are required at this configuration stage.

Picture 4

  1. From the submenu
    role
     (image 5 – orange arrow) the three previously created users (ShareX) are added (green arrow) and assigned the role of Restore Operator (blue arrow).

rolePicture 5

  1. Image 6 shows the delegation options.

The ShareA user (green arrow) is assigned the ability to restore all VBR-protected objects via the “Choose” button (orange arrow); in the restore options, only in-place restoration can be allowed (blue arrow).

The next images (7-8) show how to make the choice of objects to be displayed during the restoration delegation operations.

role-1Picture 6

scopeimage 7

role-2Image 8

  1. Image 9 illustrates and confirms that when logged in from the Enterprise Manager with ShareX user credentials (Blue arrow), only files in the corresponding shared folder (orange arrow) are visible and restorable.

ProxyImage 9

Final Note:

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VMware Broadcom – Cosa fare ?

Broadcom's Acquisition of VMware Closed: What Now?

Broadcom ha dato una grande scossa al  2024.

Dagli ultimi rumors, sembra che il licensing della appena acquisita VMware verrà pesantemente rivisto.

Uno dei primi risultati è che molti clienti si chiedono cosa sia giusto fare.

Non ho la pretesa di conoscere la risposta corretta.

Ho effettuato alcune riflessioni che mi hanno portato a pensare a quattro futuri scenari  dei quali vi parlerò nel presente articolo.

  1. Il cliente continua la collaborazione con VMware/Broadcom.
  2. Il cliente sostituisce la tecnologia Hypervisor.
  3. Il cliente migra il proprio datacenter verso un Hyperscaler o  un Service Cloud Provider Locale.
  4. Il cliente trasforma il proprio Datacenter in un  “Datacenter as a Software”.

Per ogni scenario andrò ora a descrivere i macroscopici pro e contro.

1. Credo che il desiderato di Broadcom sia quello di semplificare il più possibile il licensing al fine di avere a portfolio soluzioni snelle e semplici da proporre.

Ciò implica eliminare alcune delle soluzioni ora presenti per concentrare le  energie unicamente su quelle a maggior rilevanza d’uso e guadagno.

Ora vi domando: Le soluzioni VMware ora presenti nel vostro datacenter sono quelle strategiche anche per Broadcom?

E ancora, siamo certi che l’ottimizzazione Broadcom non toccherà il dipartimento R&D di VMware che sviluppa le soluzioni divenute ora strategiche?

E non per ultimo, quale sarà il prezzo per poter rimanere nell’ecosistema Broadcom-VMware?

2. La prima sfida è quella di fornirsi di strumenti in grado di migrare le VM da una tecnologia HyperVisor all’altra.

La seconda è quella di proteggerle.

(NDR. Meno male che Veeam Backup & Replication permette di realizzare con un solo strumento entrambe le cose 🙂 )

Aggiungo, che bisognerà essere anche fortunati nello scegliere un vendor che non sia nel mirino di una nuova Broadcom, perché finire nello stesso giro dantesco sarebbe diabolico.

Pensare ad una tecnologia open-source based?

3. Il modello degli Hyper-Scaler è quello di fornire una serie di servizi  personalizzabili.

Spesso sento qualcuno affermare che esistano dei “costi nascosti”.  Non è vero, sono tutti ben illustrati, solo che capirli preventivamente è spesso molto difficile.

Avrà quindi particolare importanza la fase di creazione del progetto di migrazione che dovrà essere particolarmente accurata al fine di non ritrovarsi brutte sorprese  a fine mese .

4. Data Center as a Software è sinonimo di un’architettura Cloud Native.

Ciò implica riscrivere applicazioni e servizi in modo tale che siano  indipendenti dal HyperVisor.

E’ il nuovo approccio che negli anni diventerà un comune standard per scrivere codice.

Nel sito troverete una serie di articoli sul mondo Container e kubernetes ai quali vi rimando.

Tante domande, una sola risposta giusta?

No, credo che la migliore strategia sia quella di ricercare il miglior bilanciamento nell’utilizzo delle diverse opzioni disponibili, per arrivare a regime con la soluzione che si adatta al meglio alle necessità della vostra azienda in un corretto bilanciamento tra costi e benefici.

Ultima nota: Non dimenticate mai di aggiungere dei piani di formazione del personale perchè il training on the job in scenari particolarmente complessi NON è mai la via migliore per rendere sicuri i vostri sistemi ovunque questi siano

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XFS – Resize the immutable file system

In the Veeam Backup & Replication environment, it may be necessary to expand the allocated space of a Linux repository.

In my environment, there is an Ubuntu 22.04 server to which a second disk(dev/sdb) was added, formatted as xfs, and made available as mount point /mnt/backup/ .

The server is used in hardened repository mode (immutability)
(https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backup/vsphere/hardened_repository.html?ver=120).

Let’s look at the simple procedure:

  • The packages to install are cloud-guest-utils and gdisk:
    “sudo apt -y install cloud-guest-utils gdisk”
  • To find out the structure of the file system use the command:
    “sudo lsblk”

      • The result shows the sizing, and mount point of Ubuntu server file system:
        NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINTS
        sda 8:0 0 16G 0 disk
        ├─sda1 8:1 0 1M 0 part
        ├─sda2 8:2 0 1.8G 0 part /boot
        └─sda3 8:3 0 14.2G 0 part
         └─ubuntu–vg-ubuntu–lv 253:0 0 10G 0 lvm /
        sdb 8:16 0 100G 0 disk. └─sdb1 8:17 0 80G 0 part /mnt/backup
        sr0 11:0 1 1024M 0 rom
  • To find out if the file system has additional space to allocate:
    “sudo growpart /dev/sdb 1”

    • The result shows the item changed
      CHANGED: partition=1 start=2048 old: size=167770079 end=167772126 new: size=209713119 end=209715166
  • The final command that widens the file system is: sudo “xfs_growfs /mnt/backup/”
  • Check the result through the command already seen: “sudo lsblk”
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Veeam + ReFS: How much space you save

ReFS is the advanced file system from Microsoft that improves data availability through technologies that can:

  1. Ensuring greater resilience of data stored on the file system.
  2. Increase the performance in reading and writing.
  3. Improve the scalability (we are talking about millions of TB).

One of the most useful and widely used features in backup is the technology of Block-Cloning which allows Veeam Backup & Replication to create full backups equal in size to an incremental.

The operation logic is simple and consists of 3 phases:

  1. TheBackup copies to the target Repository (ReFS), the incremental data of the VM / Instances / Physical Servers/ Clients To be protected.
  2. The File System ReFS will take care of storing the new blocks and creating the metadatarelated to the newly written data.
  3. The option “create a Syntethic-full” actually triggers anoperation at the level of metadata. ReFS adds to the metadata just created, those related to previous backups, thus creating a new full child of the union of all the necessary metadata. To further simplify, a logical full is created without any block being copied/moved.

Note 1: The result is not only a saving in space but also in the time it takes to make the full.

Well, how is it possible to quantify the disk space saved in the repository (ReFS)?

Timothy DeWin has made a tool (blockstat.exe) perfect for this calculation, to which I refer you for all possible options.

In my case, I solved the client’s need through:

  1. Creation through powershell of a text file (Unicode format) that would search all the Backup files generated by Veeam Backup & Replication within the ReFS repository. (See image 1)
  2. Captured the output of the bloclstat command. (see image 2)

Picture 1

picture 2