Understanding the Scale-Out Backup Repository

So, what is a SOBR you ask? A SOBR uses multiple backup repositories, called performance extents, to create a sizeable horizontal scaling repository system. Veeam Backup & Replication can use multiple repositories of various types, such as the following:

• Windows Backup Repositories: NTFS or the recommended ReFS.
• Linux Backup Repositories: XFS with Reflink.
• Object Storage: Direct to object storage. This is now available in v12 for us to use for all tiers of a SOBR, including the Performance Tier.
• Shared Folder: NFS, SMB, or CIFS.
• Deduplication storage appliances.

SOBR can expand with on-premises storage such as block storage, object storage, or a cloud-based object repository known as a Capacity Extent. Veeam Backup & Replication combines the Performance extents, Capacity extents, and Archive extents into one to summarize their capacities:

Figure 1.23 – Scale-Out Backup Repository

The ability to use a SOBR is dependent on the license version that you use with Veeam Backup & Replication:

• Enterprise: Allows for a total of two SOBRs with three active extents and unlimited inactive extents
• Enterprise Plus & VUL (Veeam Universal License): Provides an unlimited number of SOBRs with as many performance extents needed but only one Capacity/Archive Tier per SOBR

Tip

Should you downgrade your licensing from Enterprise Plus or Enterprise to Standard, you will lose the ability to target your jobs to the SOBR. You can, however, restore data from the SOBR.

The different license types limit you in the number of SOBRs and extents per SOBR you can configure. As we noted previously, there is a limit of two for Enterprise and an unlimited number for Enterprise Plus/VUL.

Tip

For the best performance and manageability, it is best to keep your SOBR limited to three to four extents if possible. If you are using object storage, then one of the components of the SOBR will be the Capacity Tier.

The SOBR works with many types of jobs or tasks in Veeam Backup & Replication:

• Backup jobs
• Backup copy jobs
• VeeamZIP jobs
• Agent backups – Linux or Windows agent v2.0 or later
• NAS Backup jobs
• Nutanix AHV backup jobs
• Veeam Agent for Mac
• Veeam backups for Amazon and Microsoft Azure (via backup copy jobs)

The next thing to keep in mind is the limitations of using a SOBR, as there are certain things you cannot do:

• Only Enterprise, Enterprise Plus, and VUL licenses can be used
• You cannot use it as a target for configuration backup jobs, replication jobs, VM copy jobs, Veeam Agent v1.5 or earlier for Windows, or v1.0 Update1 or earlier for Linux
• Adding a repository as an extent to a SOBR will not be allowed if there is an unsupported job using the repository
• Rotating drives are not supported
• You are unable to use the same extent in two SOBRs

Please refer to the following limitations page on the Veeam Backup & Replication website for more details: https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backup/vsphere/limitations-for-sobr.html?ver=120.

When it comes to the makeup of the SOBR, there are three tiers:

• Performance Tier: Fast storage and fastest access to data can now include object storage, whether on-premises or cloud-based, in v12
• Capacity Tier: Typically, this is object storage for archival and offloading capabilities
• Archive Tier: Additional object storage for long-term archival and infrequently accessed objects

Note

When adding object storage as the Performance Tier, you must ensure that each one added is of the same vendor. For example, if the first Performance Tier you add is from Wasabi, the subsequent extents must also be Wasabi-based as you cannot add something such as Amazon S3. This will be crucial in planning if you decide to start using object storage in a SOBR.

For the performance tier, you will want to ensure it has the fastest storage, block, or object storage so that when access to files and restores is required, it is as fast as possible. When you create a standard repository before adding it to a SOBR, specific settings are retained in the SOBR:

• The number of simultaneous tasks it can perform
• The storage read and write speeds
• The data decompression settings on the storage
• The block alignment settings of the storage

The SOBR will not inherit a repository backed by rotating drives. If you choose to use the Per-VM backup option, this is on by default in a SOBR.

Note

If you decide to use cloud-based object storage, keep in mind that it will not be the same as using block storage or on-premises object storage as it will need to pull data from the cloud back to on-premises, which could slow restoration down.

Something else to think about is the backup file placement policy that you will use. There are pros and cons to both, and specific operating systems, such as ReFS and XFS, require one over the other. The two types of placement policies are as follows:

• Data locality
• Performance

Please refer to the Performance Tier page on the Veeam Backup & Replication website for more information: https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backup/vsphere/backup_repository_sobr_extents.html?ver=120.

Data locality allows the scale-out to place all backup files in the chain to the same extent within the SOBR, keeping files together. In contrast, the Performance policy will enable you to choose which extents to use for both full backup files (VBK) and incremental files (VIB).

For further information on backup placement, see this Veeam Backup & Replication page: https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backup/vsphere/backup_repository_sobr_placement.html?ver=120.

Now, when it comes to the Capacity Tier, there can only be one per scale-out, and it is required to be one of the options shown in the following screenshot:

Figure 1.24 – Object Storage options for the Capacity Extent

Note

These same object storage options for the Capacity Tier apply to the Performance Tier now and, as noted, have to be the same for each extent you want to add to the Performance Tier.

Using a Capacity Tier as part of your SOBR is suitable for the following reasons:

• You can tier off older data when your SOBR reaches a specific percentage capacity to allow you to free up storage space.
• Company policy stipulates you keep a certain amount of data onsite. Then, all older data is tiered off to the Capacity Tier after X days.
• Using it falls into the 3-2-1-1-0 rule, where one copy of the information is offsite. See this blog post for more details on the 3-2-1-1-0 rule: https://www.veeam.com/blog/3-2-1-rule-for-ransomware-protection.html.

You specify the Capacity tier after creating it as a standard repository, during the SOBR wizard:

Figure 1.25 – Capacity Tier of the Edit Scale-out Backup Repository wizard

Please visit the Capacity Tier page on the Veeam Backup & Replication website for more information: https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backup/vsphere/capacity_tier.html?ver=120.

We will now tie everything we’ve learned together and create a SOBR. First, you will need to open the Veeam Backup & Replication console and select the BACKUP INFRASTRUCTURE section at the bottom left. Then, click on the Scale-out Repositories option on the left:

Figure 1.26 – The Scale-out Repositories section of the console

Once you’re in this section, you can either click the Add Scale-out Repository button in the toolbar or, on the right-hand pane, right-click and select Add Scale-out backup repository….

At this point, you must name the SOBR and give it a thoughtful description; the default name is Scale-out Backup Repository 1. Then, click Next to go to the Performance Tier section of the wizard:

Figure 1.27 – The New Scale-out Backup Repository wizard – Performance Tier

In this section, click the Add… button and choose the standard repositories that will be part of your SOBR. You can also click on the Advanced button to choose two options:

• Use per-VM backup files (recommended)
• Perform a full backup when the required extent is offline

Figure 1.28 – Advanced settings for the Performance Tier area of SOBR

Click the Next button to proceed. At this point, you must pick your placement policy – Data Locality or Performance. As we mentioned, if you’re using ReFS or XFS, you must select Data Locality to take advantage of each operating system’s storage savings. Click Next after making your choice.

You can now choose to use Capacity Tier for your SOBR or click the Apply button to finish. Note that when you select a Capacity Tier, there are several options you can enable:

• Copy backups to object storage as soon as they get created in the Performance Tier.
• Move backups to object storage as they age out of the restore window. The default is 14 days. You can also click the Override button to specify offloading until the space required is below a certain percentage.
• You can also encrypt your data upload to the object storage as another level of security:

Figure 1.29 – Capacity Tier selection for Scale-out

Note that some Capacity Tier targets support immutability. This feature is an essential attribute in the war on ransomware. In v12, Capacity Tier targets that support immutability include AWS S3 with object lock and S3-compatible object storage systems.

Please see the Veeam Readiness program to determine whether your object storage is supported here: https://www.veeam.com/alliance-partner-technical-programs.html?programCategory=ready-object-immutable.

Once complete, you will see your new SOBR. When you select it, you will see the performance tier extents and the Capacity Tier if you chose it:

Figure 1.30 – SOBR created

For further information on the SOBR, visit this Veeam Backup & Replication page: https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backup/vsphere/sobr_add.html?ver=120.

The final thing to discuss is how to manage the SOBR after creating it. Once created, you may need to do any of the following:

• Edit its settings to change the performance policy, for example.
• You may need to rescan the repository to update the configuration in the database.
• Extend the performance tier by adding another extent to the SOBR.
• Put an extent in maintenance mode to perform maintenance on the server that holds it or evacuate the backups to remove the extent.
• Switch an extent into Sealed Mode, where you do not want any more writes to it but can still restore from it. This process allows you to replace the extent with a new one.
• Run a report on the SOBR.
• Remove an extent from the SOBR, which requires maintenance mode, evacuate, and remove.
• Remove the SOBR altogether.

Two other new things with Veeam Backup & Replication v12 for managing SOBR and repositories, in general, are the VeeaMover and SOBR Rebalance options. Both of these features are new to v12 and will be covered in Chapter 3, Scale-Out Backup Repository – What’s New, but a brief overview follows.

VeeaMover

VeeaMover is a built-in utility that simplifies operations for moving data between repositories and VMs between jobs. It allows you to move from ReFS to ReFS while keeping the block clone savings (a similar thing happens with XFS too). You can also move from NTFS to ReFS to take advantage of the block clone savings in ReFS. Also, moving VMs from one job to another is realized with VeeaMover.

SOBR Rebalance

When you use a SOBR with multiple extents, depending on your placement policy, some of the extents fill up more than others. There is now a new feature called SOBR Rebalance, which helps with this by spreading backups across the extents. This operation does require an outage; however, moving the files around and depending on their size, this could take some time.

As noted, we will cover more of the VeeaMover and SOBR Rebalance in Chapter 3.

Once set up within Veeam Backup & Replication v12, the SOBR is pretty self-sufficient. Still, there are maintenance tasks that you need to do to ensure optimal performance and plenty of storage is available for backups.

For more information on SOBR management, please visit the following page on the Veeam Backup & Replication website: https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backup/vsphere/managing_sobr_data.html?ver=120.