Veeam Best Practices with Exablox Overview Exablox has worked closely with the team at Veeam to provide the best recommendations when using the the Veeam Backup & Replication software with OneBlox appliances. Together, these products form a powerful solution for backing up virtual machines and replicating data to another site -- cost effectively. Veeam has a very good model for reducing duplicate data sent to storage (deduplication). Exablox appliances (OneBloxes) also perform deduplication and can actually remove more duplicate data than Veeam itself. This difference is simple; the Exablox model identifies any duplicate data stored within a given ring (cluster) of OneBlox systems. Veeam currently only finds duplicate data within a single backup job -- which can contain one more virtual machines. It does not keep an index of all blocks stored. Veeam also uses a much larger block size than the 32-KB that OneBlox uses. The Veeam block sizes used are between 128-KB and 1-MB. Initial testing at Exablox indicates that the Veeam compression does not increase overall storage capacity on the OneBlox appliance. Based on these two points, we recommend that all deduplication and compression be disabled within Veeam for backup jobs being sent to the OneBlox appliance. Veeam Configuration 1. The first step is to configure a backup repository within Veeam. For OneBlox, configure a Shared Folder as shown in Figure 1. 1.1. When configuring the path for this repository, use a directory below the root of the share being used. Figure 2 shows an example of this where the Public share is used and the directory is Public \test. This is done to ensure that Veeam is never able to scan the OneBlox Snapshot directory that is always located at the top (root) of each share. If it does scan this directory, it will import many earlier backup jobs which have been performed -- filling up the Veeam backup catalog and requiring time-consuming manual deletions. Veeam Best Practice with Exablox, v.8.2 page 1
Figure 1: Adding a repository for OneBlox 1.2. The current OneBlox software works best with a single backup stream. Configure this as shown in Figure 2 below. Figure 2: Limiting concurrent backups to one Veeam Best Practice with Exablox, v.8.2 page 2
1.3. To improve OneBlox deduplication, please select the Align backup file data blocks option as shown in Figure 3 below. Figure 3: Setting Align file data 2. Once a repository has been created, it is time to create backup jobs which use it. These can be new or existing jobs, but Exablox has several recommendations for configuring these to provide optimal performance with OneBlox appliances. Figure 4 shows the creation of a Backup Job and shows the repository selection. Figure 4: Creating a Backup Job and selecting Veeam Best Practice with Exablox, v.8.2 page 3
Figure 6: Disabling deduplication and compression as well as selecting a local target Figure 5: Choosing Incremental backups with synthetic fulls 2.1. Exablox recommends Incremental backups as opposed to Reverse Incremental backups. This is just a recommendation though, since the later might suit your needs better. However, our most successful customer using Veeam uses standard incrementals and is happy with this option. With Reverse Incremental backups, Veeam reads the previous backup and combines it with the current backup to create a synthetic full backup during the backup. NAS devices perform better with the simple write model of the Incremental backups than the mixed I/O from the Reverse Incremental option. Fortunately, synthetic full backups can still be created with the Incremental Veeam Best Practice with Exablox, v.8.2 page 4
backup option; simply select the check box that specifies Enable Synthetic Fulls below the Incremental option. This last point is shown in Figure 5 below. 2.2. The next step in creating a backup job is to disable deduplication and compression as recommended above. Also, the OneBlox should be defined as a Local target. These are shown in Figure 6 below. Veeam Best Practice with Exablox, v.8.2 page 5