HPE Reference Configuration for Veeam Backup & Replication on HPE StoreOnce Systems with StoreOnce Catalyst

Reference Architecture

Reference Architecture

Contents Executive summary ................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 3 Solution overview ..................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 4

Understanding Recovery Point Objective (RPO) and Recovery Time Objective (RTO) ................................................................................................................................................. 4 Backup and recovery with Veeam Backup & Replication and HPE StoreOnce Systems ................................................................................................................................................ 4 Guidelines for achieving the best backup and recovery solution .......................................................................................................................................................................................................... 5

Solution components ............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 6 VMware ESXi Server ....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 6 Veeam Backup & Replication virtual machine ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 6 HPE StoreOnce 6600 backup appliance ..................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 6 Network configuration .................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 6 HPE 3PAR StoreServ 8400 storage array ................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 6 HPE Common Test Automation Framework (HPE CTAF) ......................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 7 Environment setup diagram .................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 7

Best practices and configuration guidance for the solution ............................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 8 Configuring an HPE StoreOnce backup repository ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 8 Backup and recovery methods with Veeam Backup & Replication ..................................................................................................................................................................................................... 9

Performance observations and considerations ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 10 Statistics and logging ................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 10 Test overview .................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 10 Varying block size ......................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 11 Varying rate of change ............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 14 Monthly backup schedule with expire ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 16 High-bandwidth backups....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 19 Abnormal capacity utilization ............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 22

Automating tasks ................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 23 PowerShell snap-in for Veeam Backup & Replication .................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 23 D2DServices ....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 25

Summary ...................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 26 Resources and additional links ................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 27

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Executive summary Veeam Backup & Replication offers a data protection solution for backup and replication together in a single software solution. HPE StoreOnce Systems with StoreOnce Catalyst, coupled with Veeam Backup & Replication software, provide a deduplication-based backup architecture to significantly reduce storage space and to increase performance compared to traditional NAS protocol connectivity.

With available source-side or client-side deduplication capabilities, HPE StoreOnce with Veeam Backup & Replication provides deduplication technology to effectively backup, replicate, and restore virtualized environments.

HPE StoreOnce benefits include the following:

• Up to 95% reduction in the amount of backup data to be stored compared to traditional non-compressed disk drives

• Pay-as-you-grow model enabled by a scale-out architecture to retain up to 34 petabytes of data in a single pool

• Automated backup and Disaster Recovery (DR) operations

• Industry-leading backup speeds of up to 139 TB/hour to meet shrinking backup windows

• Flexible offerings, ranging from powerful dedicated appliances for larger offices and data centers to flexible virtual appliances for highly virtualized offices, or smaller and remote offices

• Data protection from unauthorized access through data-at-rest encryption and secure erase functionality for disks that are lost, stolen, or discarded

• Seamless integration with existing backup applications, as well as flexible integration into SAN, virtualized, and other environments

Veeam Backup & Replication and HPE StoreOnce Catalyst solution benefits include the following:

• Source-side or client-side deduplication capabilities

• Virtual synthetic full backups and support for Instant VM Recovery

• More efficient backup data transfer over LAN and WAN

• Reduced storage space and faster performance compared to traditional NAS protocol (CIFS and NFS) connectivity

• Available on-site and off-site backup copies using HPE StoreOnce Replication

Note Actual performance is dependent upon configuration dataset type, compression levels, number of data streams, number of devices emulated, and number of concurrent tasks, such as housekeeping or replication.

Target audience: This Reference Configuration introduces a practical data protection solution for Veeam Backup & Replication with HPE StoreOnce Systems. We assume that readers of this document are familiar with Veeam Backup & Replication, HPE StoreOnce data protection functionality, HPE 3PAR StoreServ, and VMware®. If the user intends to automate the backup or recovery process, we also assume familiarity with Windows® PowerShell and PowerShell scripting.

This document is intended for presales consultants, solution architects, database, backup, system or storage operators, and administrators who are designing, implementing, and maintaining common backup tasks. This document describes data protection solutions for HPE StoreOnce Systems with Veeam Backup & Replication, best practices, reference configuration, configuration and setup recommendations, performance observations and considerations, and Veeam Backup & Replication automation using Windows PowerShell.

This white paper describes a project developed by Hewlett Packard Enterprise in August 2017.

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Solution overview Understanding Recovery Point Objective (RPO) and Recovery Time Objective (RTO) Recovery Point Objective (RPO) refers to the maximal permissible period of time during which operational data may be lost without the ability to recover. When recovering data and replaying logs from backup media, we want to keep the recovery window as small as possible.

Recovery Time Objective (RTO) refers to the maximal permissible time it takes to recover the system, so that its operations can be resumed. The degree to which a realistic RTO can be lowered depends on the backup methodology being used, as well as the time it takes to restart/reboot the application or server.

Designing the appropriate data protection solution is often determined by meeting acceptable backup and recovery windows.

Backup and recovery with Veeam Backup & Replication and HPE StoreOnce Systems The Veeam Backup & Replication solution presents a number of options when backing up or recovering virtual machines. When creating a backup job, Veeam presents several options, but only a few may be practical in a particular situation. Similarly, a number of recovery methods can be used to minimize downtime and optimize RTO. This section highlights some of these methods and includes best practices.

The backup proxy, which is the component that resides between the backup server and other components of the backup infrastructure, processes the backup or recovery job and sends the backup traffic. By default, the proxy is assigned to the backup server with the Veeam Backup & Replication installation; however, proxies can be configured in the Backup Infrastructure pane in Veeam. Veeam enables VMware VM proxies and Microsoft® Hyper-V offhost backup proxies. When deploying a proxy server, make sure that the proxy machine has direct access to the storage on which the virtual machine resides. By doing this, the proxy can bypass the LAN and have direct access to the VM.

Virtual machines can be recovered in a number of ways. One option is the Full VM Recovery option, which enables recovery of a VM from the backup file to its original location, or a different location. With this option, a virtual machine can be restored to a different host, datastore, or resource pool. The Full VM Recovery option is similar to the Instant VM Recovery option. The Instant VM Recovery option allows recovery of a VM directly from a backup file, enabling a faster RTO and minimizing disruption and downtime. When Instant VM Recovery (IVMR) is performed, a VM image is mounted directly to a VMware ESXi host directly from a deduplicated or compressed backup file. With IVMR, a VM can be temporarily powered on before being migrated to production.

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Guidelines for achieving the best backup and recovery solution Although results may vary, the following settings have been observed to yield the best results. These settings apply to a 200 GB virtual machine dataset or smaller:

• To achieve the highest backup and restore throughput, higher block sizes generally increase throughput performance. It is recommended to use 4096 KB for most purposes. This setting can be configured by specifying the “Storage optimization” setting when a backup job is created. Figure 1 shows where to find this setting.

Figure 1. When specifying storage optimization, use the Local target (16TB+ backup files) option in most cases.

There are four options for storage optimization, as shown in the table below. Each setting corresponds to a different block size.

Table 1. When specifying the storage optimization, each setting corresponds to a particular block size.

Storage optimization Block size

Local target (16TB+ backup files) 4096 KB

Local target 1024 KB

LAN target 512 KB

WAN target 256 KB

• When defining the load control of the backup repository, if the size of the overall virtual machine files is less than 200 GB, adjust the StoreOnce Catalyst backup repository by setting the maximum concurrent tasks to unlimited. Similarly, adjust the read and write data rates to unlimited.

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Note HPE StoreOnce Data at Rest Encryption does not encrypt data while in transit to the HPE StoreOnce.

• To achieve the highest backup and restore throughput, unless processing power on the client side is limited, use low-bandwidth backups. Low-bandwidth refers to an HPE StoreOnce Catalyst backup where deduplication takes place on the client side rather than on the HPE StoreOnce. In contrast, high-bandwidth backups force deduplication to be processed on the HPE StoreOnce, which could be limiting if a large number of VMs need to be backed up.

• To decrease overall HPE StoreOnce size on disk and backup time, use a weekly full/daily incremental backup schedule. This can be configured in the Advanced Settings tab when creating a backup job.

• We also suggest to enable the Veeam Virtual Synthetic Full (VSF) feature to occur at least once weekly. VSF is a feature co-developed by HPE and Veeam engineering that makes it possible to execute only incremental backups after the initial full backup. Incremental backups are less resource intensive than a full backup, especially for production infrastructure. At the same time, the VSF reduces the workload for the backup infrastructure because Veeam Backup & Replication does not need to make any resource-intensive data merges, similar to the ones required in the traditional Veeam reverse incremental or incremental forever policy.

Solution components The following components were used for testing.

VMware ESXi Server An HPE ProLiant DL380p Gen8 12-core (2 x Intel® Xeon® CPU E5-2667 @ 2.90GHz) server was configured with 1 TB of storage and 64 GB of physical memory.

Note All virtual machines hosted on this server utilized HPE 3PAR StoreServ storage.

Veeam Backup & Replication virtual machine The virtual machine hosting Veeam Backup & Replication was comprised of 4 vCPU, 16 GB vRAM and 400 GB of non-SSD local storage.

The operating system was Windows Server® 2016.

A VMXNET3 adapter was required on the 10 GbE network.

The virtual machine was designated as the proxy server.

HPE StoreOnce 6600 backup appliance The HPE StoreOnce backup appliance was configured to run firmware version 3.16.2-1712.1.

The backup appliance used one couplet. The couplet had two drive enclosures with 36 x 4 TB drives per shelf. One node was used for testing.

Housekeeping, replication, and StoreOnce Catalyst were enabled.

Network configuration The management network used 1 GbE network cards. The backup network used 10 GbE network cards.

HPE 3PAR StoreServ 8400 storage array The HPE 3PAR StoreServ storage array used 24 x 1.2 TB non-SSD drives. The HPE 3PAR StoreServ storage array used OS version 3.2.2.290.

The HPE 3PAR StoreServ storage array was connected to an 8 Gb fibre channel backend fabric.

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HPE Common Test Automation Framework (HPE CTAF) HPE CTAF is a Perl-based testing tool used to generate, modify, and verify test datasets.

The backup appliance was configured to use a separate store per backup test. The StoreOnce backup appliance Catalyst store was recreated before the start of each backup script.

Housekeeping data was stored and monitored as well.

Environment setup diagram Figure 2 shows the environment setup.

Figure 2. Test environment

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Best practices and configuration guidance for the solution Configuring an HPE StoreOnce backup repository Before configuring a backup repository with Veeam Backup & Replication software, create a target store on the HPE StoreOnce appliance that can store backup and Backup Copy Job files. The following steps outline how to create an HPE StoreOnce Catalyst target:

1. Log in to the HPE StoreOnce Management Console (StoreOnce GUI) with the administrator username and password.

2. In the Navigator pane, expand the StoreOnce category and then expand the StoreOnce Catalyst category.

3. Select Stores under StoreOnce Catalyst to view the Catalyst stores hosted on the HPE StoreOnce appliance.

4. Choose Create in the upper-right corner of the screen and select a service set if the appliance is a multi-node appliance.

5. Configure the Catalyst store as desired, as shown in Figure 3. Table 2 describes the configuration settings.

Figure 3. HPE StoreOnce Catalyst store details as shown in the StoreOnce Administrator Console.

Table 2. Descriptions of the configuration settings when creating a new HPE StoreOnce Catalyst store.

Catalyst Store Detail Description

Name Name of the HPE StoreOnce Catalyst target. Can only contain letters, numbers, and spaces.

Description Description of the HPE StoreOnce Catalyst store.

Data Log Retention Period (Days) Number of days that the Data Job Logs are stored before HPE StoreOnce housekeeping removes them.

Inbound/Outbound Copy Job Log Retention Period (Days)

Number of days the inbound/outbound copy job logs are stored before HPE StoreOnce housekeeping removes them.

Primary (Default) Transfer Policy The transfer policy that Veeam Backup & Replication initially attempts to use when initiating the backup or Backup Copy Job.

Secondary Transfer Policy The transfer policy that Veeam Backup & Replication resorts to if the Primary Transfer Policy fails or Veeam deems it necessary.

Physical Data Size Quota The total size of the store as shown in the Size On Disk column of the HPE StoreOnce Administrator Console.

Logical Data Size Quota The total size of the store as shown in the User Data Stored column of the HPE StoreOnce Administrator Console.

Store Encryption Enabled Enable data-at-rest encryption.

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Tip: Transfer Policy Specifying the transfer policy determines where the deduplication is processed and how the backup data is transferred from the Veeam server to the HPE StoreOnce. Low-bandwidth (LBW) policies process the backup data on the Veeam proxy server (client-side), allowing only unique data to be sent over the wire, significantly reducing the amount of data transferred over the network. An LBW policy is recommended when backing up data over a WAN network to significantly lower bandwidth utilization and to reduce backup time. Additionally, an LBW policy is recommended when backing up a large number of VMs. In contrast, a high-bandwidth (HBW) policy enables the deduplication processing to occur on the HPE StoreOnce (source-side). HBW is recommended when proxy CPU usage is a concern.

Backup and recovery methods with Veeam Backup & Replication Backup job Before Veeam Backup & Replication performs a backup of a virtual machine, you must configure a backup job. Backup jobs specify when, where, and how a virtual machine or machines are backed up. These configuration parameters include which VMs are backed up, what storage infrastructure they are backed up to, which proxy server is processing the data, backup schedule, and other settings. Advanced job settings include backup mode, compression and deduplication, block size, notification settings, automated post-job activity, and other settings.

Backup Copy Job Without backup infrastructure spanning across multiple storage platforms and remote sites, the level of data protection may not be sufficient. Veeam Backup & Replication offers backup copy capabilities. Backup copy allows you to create several instances of the same backup in different locations, including on-site and off-site, making it easy to maintain multiple copies of your data. A Backup Copy Job can be configured from the infrastructure, from other backups, or from other jobs. The VM data can then be transferred directly or through built-in WAN accelerators, depending on whether or not bandwidth is a significant issue.

Data recovery Veeam Backup & Replication provides many ways to recover data, including recovering the entire VM, the virtual disks, only the VM files, or other options. Veeam Backup & Replication uses the same image-level backup for all data recovery options. While the Instant VM recovery option allows you to restore a VM directly from a backup file, the Full VM recovery option provides more customization choices for the destination of the VM recovery. Two other options include Guest files (Microsoft Windows) and Guest files (other OS), which allow individual files to be recovered from a particular backup Figure 4 shows a file-level recovery.

Figure 4. During a file-level recovery, individual files can be recovered from a particular backup.

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Performance observations and considerations Statistics and logging HPE StoreOnce data can be gathered from the StoreOnce Management Console (StoreOnce GUI). The following steps outline how to do this for Catalyst targets:

1. Log in to the HPE StoreOnce Management Console (StoreOnce GUI) with the administrator username and password.

2. In the Navigator pane, expand the StoreOnce category and expand the StoreOnce Catalyst category.

3. Select Stores to view StoreOnce data, such as Target Name, Status, User Data Stored, Size On Disk, and Deduplication Ratio.

4. To view HPE StoreOnce Catalyst files, choose a Catalyst store and select the Catalyst Item Summary tab.

5. For HPE StoreOnce data regarding throughputs, total data read/written, and other throughput data, select the Data Jobs tab. Figure 5 shows an example table that is displayed.

Figure 5. Read and write throughput data as shown in the HPE StoreOnce GUI

Note You can find data job logs by selecting the Catalyst store in the HPE StoreOnce GUI. Select Inbound Copy Jobs or Outbound Copy Jobs and set the filter criteria; then choose Show Jobs. These logs show data such as data size, throughput, status, and other additional details.

Test overview We set up a test environment to assess the impact that block size, data modification, monthly backup schedules, and high-bandwidth backups have on factors such as backup and restore throughput, deduplication ratios, and CPU/memory usage. A 200 GB dataset was created with HPE CTAF on both a Windows and a Red Hat® Enterprise Linux® (RHEL) VM, which acted as the devices being backed up. Tests were run independently for both the Windows and RHEL virtual machines. For the majority of the testing, 14 full backups were taken, where 1% (~2 GB) of the data was modified between each backup to simulate a production environment. These steps were repeated for each section of the testing. Refer to “Solution components” to gain an understanding of the setup and configuration for this testing and to see a diagram of the setup environment. Key test points are as follows:

• All tests used a data modification rate of 1% between each backup, except the specific test for different modification rates.

• All tests were run independently with either a Windows or RHEL virtual machine as the device being backed up.

• The Windows and RHEL machines existed on separate LUNs on the HPE 3PAR StoreServ.

• Catalyst over Ethernet (CoE) was used for all tests.

• All tests were run using 4096 KB block size, except the specific test for varying block sizes. Refer to Figure 1 and Table 1 for more information.

• All tests used HPE StoreOnce Catalyst low-bandwidth, except the specific high-bandwidth test.

• The data, including deduplication ratio, user data stored, and total size on disk, was pulled directly from the HPE StoreOnce, as reported.

• All tests used HPE CTAF for data generation and data modification with a 200 GB dataset. For more information on HPE CTAF, refer to “HPE Common Test Automation Framework (HPE CTAF)”.

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• The CPU and memory usage statistics were gathered from the VM proxy server. All CPU and memory usage statistics in these test results are the sum total of all of the processes on the proxy VM, including ones not related to Veeam Backup & Replication. The idle CPU usage was measured to be 0.5% and the idle memory usage was measured to be 8%.

Varying block size Figure 6 shows the effect of varying block sizes on backup and restore throughput.

Figure 6. HPE StoreOnce backup and restore throughput with varying block size and 1% rate of data change between each backup.

The Windows VM backup and restore throughput are shown in blue while the RHEL backup and restore throughput are shown in grey. This convention is consistent for all tests in this section. Here are some key results:

• Increasing block size generally increased the resulting backup and restore throughput.

• After the initial full backup, the throughput remained relatively steady.

• Because 4096 KB was identified to yield the highest throughput, this block size was used for the remainder of the testing.

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Tip: Deduplication’s effect on throughput As shown in Figure 6, the initial full backup throughput is lower than successive full backups, regardless of OS and block size. On the first backup, all the data must be written to disk because there is nothing to compare data against. Duplicate blocks within the dataset will be deduplicated, and compression still occurs on the initial backup. Deduplication ratio and size on disk were also measured during the varying block size test. As shown in Figure 7, block size has little or no effect on deduplication ratio. As HPE CTAF introduces more random seed data into the backup data, over time the HPE StoreOnce contains less redundant data, resulting in a gradually decreasing deduplication ratio as a function of full backups taken.

Figure 7. HPE StoreOnce deduplication ratio and size on disk with varying block size and 1% rate of data change between each backup

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In the same test, CPU and memory usage measurements were taken, as shown in Figure 8. In this test, there was no clear correlation of the effect that block size incurs on CPU and memory resources. As shown in the results, the RHEL VM required less CPU usage and slightly less memory usage.

Figure 8. Veeam proxy CPU and memory usage with varying block size and 1% rate of data change between each backup

Note As mentioned in the “Test overview” section, the CPU and memory usage measurements account for all of the processes running on the Veeam Backup & Replication VM.

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Varying rate of change After identifying 4096 KB as the block size that yielded the highest throughput, a varying rate of change test was carried out while measuring the same statistics. Figure 9 shows the impact of variable data change with Windows and RHEL servers as the devices backed up.

Figure 9. HPE StoreOnce backup and restore throughput with a 4096 KB block size and 1%, 3%, and 5% rate of data change between each backup.

In contrast to block size, rate of data change has little or no effect on backup and restore throughput. (See Figure 9.) A small amount of data change should result in an almost identical dataset for each backup, explaining the negligible variance in backup and restore throughput.

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Figure 10 shows the effect that a variable rate of change has on deduplication ratio and size on disk. Notice that higher rates of data change tend to have higher size on disk and lower deduplication ratios, reflecting the fact that more redundant data implies more deduplication.

Figure 10. HPE StoreOnce deduplication ratio and size on disk with a 4096 KB block size and 1%, 3%, and 5% rate of data change between each backup.

Finally, for the same test, CPU and memory usage data was collected, as shown in Figure 11. In this case, CPU usage was higher for Windows and lower for RHEL, and the rate of data change did not have a large impact on CPU usage.

Figure 11. Veeam proxy CPU and memory usage with a 4096 KB block size and 1%, 3%, and 5% rate of data change between each backup.

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Monthly backup schedule with expire For this test, 42 backups were taken, where every seventh backup beginning with the first was an active full backup, and all other backups were incremental. Additionally, a restore point retention policy was configured so that the backup job retains 28 restore points. Thus, this test simulates a production environment with weekly full backups, daily incremental backups, and a monthly retention policy. Figure 12 shows backup and restore throughput with respect to this backup schedule.

Figure 12. HPE StoreOnce backup and restore throughput with a monthly backup schedule, 4096 KB block size, and 1% rate of data change between each backup. Every seventh backup is a full backup, beginning with the first backup. After 28 backups, Veeam Backup & Replication begins to remove the oldest backups.

As Figure 12 shows, full backups have much higher throughput compared to incremental backups, because, in contrast to full backups, incremental backups do not have time to reach the peak backup throughput. As with the other tests, the RHEL VM typically had lower backup throughput but higher restore throughput.

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Figure 13 demonstrates the sort of deduplication ratio behavior that you might notice with a backup policy that involves a weekly full backup with daily incremental backups. Each time a full backup is taken, the deduplication ratio increases compared to an incremental backup, where deduplication either does not change or decreases slightly. This sort of behavior is expected. Because an incremental backup is introducing entirely new data into the HPE StoreOnce Catalyst store, the size on disk grows, and thus, the deduplication ratio either shrinks or remains the same.

Figure 13. HPE StoreOnce deduplication and size on disk with a monthly backup schedule, 4096 KB block size, and 1% rate of data change between each backup. Every seventh backup is a full backup, beginning with the first backup. After 28 backups, Veeam Backup & Replication begins to remove the oldest backups.

Note This chart might be highly influenced by the workload generator used for this test environment. It is based on large files and thus the VMware change block tracking segment, which is roughly 1 MB in size, generally contains changed data. This produces a smaller vSphere Installation Bundle (VIB) that has less of a chance of being deduplicated.

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The last figure in this test, Figure 14, shows CPU and memory usage behavior. Full backups require more CPU and memory compared to incremental backups because the Veeam proxy must process a greater amount of data. Additionally, as seen with other tests, the RHEL VM generally requires less CPU and memory to process.

Figure 14. Veeam proxy CPU and memory usage with a monthly backup schedule, 4096 KB block size, and 1% rate of data change between each backup. Every seventh backup is a full backup, beginning with the first backup. After 28 backups, Veeam Backup & Replication begins to remove the oldest backups.

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High-bandwidth backups The final test in this series is the high-bandwidth test. For more information on the difference between a low-bandwidth and high-bandwidth policy, refer to “Configuring an HPE StoreOnce backup repository”. When an HPE StoreOnce Catalyst store is created, it can be configured as either high-bandwidth or low-bandwidth transfer policy, as shown in Figure 3. The purpose of this test is to identify key differences in the high-bandwidth (HBW) versus low-bandwidth (LBW) transfer policies, in regards to backup and restore throughput, deduplication ratio, size on disk, and server-side CPU and memory usage.

As shown in Figure 15, the HBW policy generally had higher backup throughputs in this test. This would likely not be the case in a production environment. In a production environment with a large number of concurrent VM backups, LBW generally increases the throughput, and thus, we encourage the use of LBW policies in most cases. There are a few reasons that HBW was higher in this case. For this test, the HPE StoreOnce contains a greater amount of processing power than the Veeam Backup & Replication server, which was assigned four vCPUs. As a result, the HBW backups were processed more quickly and had a higher throughput. Additionally, in contrast to HBW, LBW policies require much less logical data to be sent over the wire; therefore, having a smaller likelihood of being physically limited by the logical data transfer over the connection.

Figure 15. HPE StoreOnce backup and restore throughput with high-bandwidth (HBW) and low-bandwidth (LBW) transfer policies, 4096 KB block size, and 1% rate of data change between each backup.

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In reference to Figure 16, the deduplication ratio and size on disk had little-to-no variation between HBW and LBW. The HBW versus LBW test exhibited the same deduplication ratio behavior compared to other tests in this series.

Figure 16. HPE StoreOnce deduplication ratio and size on disk with high-bandwidth (HBW) and low-bandwidth (LBW) transfer policies, 4096 KB block size, and 1% rate of data change between each backup.

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The last chart in this series, Figure 17, demonstrates the effect of HBW and LBW policies in relation to Veeam Backup & Replication server-side CPU and memory usage. Notice that HBW policies significantly reduce server-side CPU usage, decreasing the processing required by roughly 50%. Additionally, memory usage was reduced by about 15%. If your proxy server has CPU limitations and the HPE StoreOnce has processing to spare, you can use HBW policies.

Figure 17. Server-side CPU and memory usage with high-bandwidth (HBW) and low-bandwidth (LBW) transfer policies, 4096 KB block size, and 1% rate of data change between each backup.

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Abnormal capacity utilization When executing a Veeam Backup Copy Job, it has been observed that, when the number of restore points for a particular Backup Copy Job has been reached, Veeam merges the earliest incremental backup with the earliest full backup, resulting in a new file, which has a size that is the sum of the previous two. If you notice that the size of the Backup Copy Job file is growing unnecessarily, we have found two solutions that should alleviate the problem.

The first is a Grandfather-Father-Son (GFS) retention policy. In addition to long-term archiving, we have found that a GFS policy serves an additional purpose of restoring the merged full backup to the original size. Figure 18 demonstrates how to configure a GFS policy. A good example of a GFS policy animation is at veeam.com/kb1931.

Figure 18. A GFS retention policy can be configured by selecting “Keep the following restore points as full backups for archival purposes”.

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Figure 19 and Figure 20 compare an HPE StoreOnce Catalyst store before and after Veeam conducts a weekly GFS. Notice that the oldest full backup (35 GB in size) has been removed due to the GFS retention policy and the newest full backup was restored to the correct size of 12.5 GB, which is roughly the size of the VM being backed up.

Figure 19. A StoreOnce Catalyst store before a weekly GFS with a restore point limit.

Figure 20. A StoreOnce Catalyst store after a weekly GFS with a restore point limit.

The second solution to restore the size of a Backup Copy Job Catalyst store is to conduct an Active Full backup manually. This eventually erases the overgrown Catalyst file and restores the file to its original size.

Automating tasks PowerShell snap-in for Veeam Backup & Replication Veeam Backup & Replication comes with a Windows PowerShell extension in the form of a PowerShell snap-in. This extension allows the user to execute almost any command that is available in the Veeam Backup & Replication GUI. As with other snap-ins, Veeam’s PowerShell snap-in has to be added each time a Windows PowerShell console is open or a script is executed. To do this, open a PowerShell window and execute the following command:

PS C:\> Add-PSSnapin VeeamPSSnapin

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After adding in the snap-in, refer to following table when using Veeam PowerShell cmdlets.1

Table 3. Descriptions of Veeam PowerShell commands.

Veeam PowerShell command Description Syntax

Get-VBRBackup Returns the list of backups stored in the Veeam Backup & Replication database. This cmdlet returns backups that were created by backup jobs, Backup Copy Jobs, vCD jobs, and Endpoint backup jobs.

Get-VBRBackup [-Name <String[]>] [-WarningAction <ActionPreference>] [-WarningVariable <String>] [-PipelineVariable <String>] [<CommonParameters>]

Get-VBRJob Returns the list of jobs stored in Veeam Backup & Replication database.

Get-VBRJob [-Name <String[]>] [-WarningAction <ActionPreference>] [-WarningVariable <String>] [-PipelineVariable <String>] [<CommonParameters>]

Get-VBRRestorePoint Returns restore points stored in Veeam Backup & Replication database.

Get-VBRRestorePoint [[-Backup] <CBackup[]>] [-Name <String[]>] [-ObjectId <Guid[]>] [-WarningAction <ActionPreference>] [-WarningVariable <String>] [-PipelineVariable <String>] [<CommonParameters>]

Start-VBRJob Allows you to start a created or stopped job. Start-VBRJob [-Job] <CBackupJob[]> [-FullBackup] [-RetryBackup] [-StartChainedJobs] [-RunAsync] [-WarningAction <ActionPreference>] [-WarningVariable <String>] [-PipelineVariable <String>] [<CommonParameters>]

Start-VBRRestoreVM Starts the entire VM restore. You can restore the VM to the original location or to another location. Use an appropriate parameter set for each case.

Start-VBRRestoreVM [-RestorePoint] <COib> [-Server] <CHost> [[-ResourcePool] <CViResourcePoolItem>] [[-Datastore] <CViDatastoreItem>] [-Folder <CViFolderItem>] [-StoragePolicy <VBRViStoragePolicy>] [-VMName <String>] [-DiskType <EDiskCreationMode>] [-PowerUp <Boolean>] [-SkipTagsRestore] [-Reason <String>] [-RunAsync] [-QuickRollback] [-Credentials <CCredentials>] [-WarningAction <ActionPreference>] [-WarningVariable <String>] [-PipelineVariable <String>] [<CommonParameters>]

Remove-VBRBackup Removes the selected backups either from the database or from the disk depending on which options are specified.

Remove-VBRBackup [-Backup] <CBackup[]> [-FromDisk] [-WarningAction <ActionPreference>] [-WarningVariable <String>] [-PipelineVariable <String>] [-WhatIf] [-Confirm] [<CommonParameters>]

Remove-VBRJob Removes a selected backup, replication or Backup Copy Job from Veeam Backup & Replication console and database.

Remove-VBRJob [-Job] <CBackupJob[]> [-WarningAction <ActionPreference>] [-WarningVariable <String>] [-PipelineVariable <String>] [-WhatIf] [-Confirm] [<CommonParameters>]

Remove-VBRRestorePoint Removes individual VMs from backup or replicas. Remove-VBRRestorePoint [-Name <String[]>] [-Oib] <COib[]> [-WarningAction <ActionPreference>] [-WarningVariable <String>] [-PipelineVariable <String>] [-WhatIf] [-Confirm] [<CommonParameters>]

Sync-VBRBackupCopyJob Starts manual data synchronization for the selected Backup Copy Job.

Sync-VBRBackupCopyJob -Job <IJob> [-FullBackup] [-WarningAction <ActionPreference>] [-WarningVariable <String>] [-PipelineVariable <String>] [<CommonParameters>]

1 The information in Table 3 is from the Microsoft PowerShell Get-Help technical support website. Refer to Microsoft technical support for updates and additional information:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/Microsoft.PowerShell.Core/Get-Help?view=powershell-5.1

Reference Architecture Page 25

The following commands are a few examples of what can be done with Veeam Backup & Replication using Windows PowerShell. In all of these examples, you must replace Backup Job Name with the name of your backup job.

This command starts a full backup or an incremental backup, depending on how the backup job is configured:

Get-VBRJob | where{$_.Name -eq 'Backup Job Name'} | Start-VBRJob

If an active full backup is desired, -FullBackup can be appended to the previous example as follows:

Get-VBRJob | where{$_.Name -eq 'Backup Job Name'} | Start-VBRJob –FullBackup

A restore can be initiated in a similar fashion:

Start-VBRRestoreVM -RestorePoint (Get-VBRRestorePoint -Backup (Get-VBRBackup -Name 'Backup Job Name'))[0] -PowerUp $true -ToOriginalLocation -StoragePolicyAction Default

In this example, there are three cmdlets embedded within each other: Get-VBRBackup, Get-VBRRestorePoint, and Start-VBRRestoreVM. This command gets the oldest restore point from a backup job called Backup Job Name and restores it to the original location with the default storage policy. Additionally, Veeam Backup & Replication powers up the virtual appliance automatically after the restore concludes.

The final example shows how to initiate a Backup Copy Job through Windows PowerShell:

Sync-VBRBackupCopyJob -Job (Get-VBRJob -Name 'Backup Job Name')

Note Veeam’s PowerShell snap-in is a powerful automation tool. For more information, go to https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backup/powershell/getting_started.html?ver=95

D2DServices If you want to automate the gathering of HPE StoreOnce data, you can use D2DServices to pull data from the HPE StoreOnce without having to retrieve it directly from the HPE StoreOnce Management Console (StoreOnce GUI). To do this, log in to the HPE StoreOnce GUI. Then append /d2dservices to the end of the fully qualified domain name (FQDN) of the HPE StoreOnce GUI in a web browser. There you will find a list of various URLs that you can append to the end of the FQDN to access logs, making it possible to retrieve these logs using various commands or scripts.

For example, if the FQDN of the HPE StoreOnce GUI is https://storeonce.lab3.example.com, you would access D2DServices at http://storeonce.lab3.example.com/d2dservices. This page provides a list of URLs that you can append to http://storeonce.lab3.example.com/d2dservices to retrieve logs. To build on this example, one of the URLs that this page lists is http://storeonce.lab3.example.com/d2dservices/cluster/servicesets/{SSID}/services/cat/stores/?media=txt, where SSID is the service set ID of the HPE StoreOnce Catalyst store. This URL provides the same details that can be found in the GUI when viewing an HPE StoreOnce Catalyst store, including store name, status, version, user data stored, size on disk, deduplication ratio, and more. A simple cURL command or other similar commands, combined with regular expression language, allows you to retrieve this data through automation rather than from the StoreOnce GUI.

Reference Architecture Page 26

Summary Configuring backup and recovery can be a challenging experience for system administrators who invest considerable amounts of time in creating virtual environments and conducting rigorous tests to ensure backup and recovery time windows are met. Plus, backup and recovery tasks must be accomplished with minimal disruption to the business. Veeam Backup & Replication provides a solid software package for virtual machine backup, replication, and recovery; however, without effective storage infrastructure, meeting the demands of the business can be difficult.

HPE StoreOnce Systems offer powerful scale-out storage infrastructure that can be used alongside Veeam Backup & Replication to significantly reduce the size of backup data and to streamline the virtual appliance data-protection foundation. With automated backup and disaster recovery operation, together with secure data retention and built-in data encryption for data at rest, HPE StoreOnce is a powerful and reliable data protection tool.

With the HPE StoreOnce Catalyst backup solution, HPE, together with Veeam, offers an end-to-end data protection solution to recover virtual appliances rapidly, effectively, and with minimal disruption to business.

Reference Architecture Page 27

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© Copyright 2017-2018 Hewlett Packard Enterprise Development LP. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. The only warranties for Hewlett Packard Enterprise products and services are set forth in the express warranty statements accompanying such products and services. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an additional warranty. Hewlett Packard Enterprise shall not be liable for technical or editorial errors or omissions contained herein.

Microsoft, Windows, and Windows Server are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. Intel and Intel Xeon are trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and other countries. Red Hat is a registered trademark of Red Hat, Inc. in the United States and other countries. Linux is the registered trademark of Linus Torvalds in the U.S. and other countries. VMware is a registered trademark or trademark of VMware, Inc. in the United States and/or other jurisdictions. Veeam is a trademark of Veeam Software, registered in the U.S. and/or other countries.

a00023056enw, May 2018, Rev. 2

Resources and additional links Veeam Backup & Replication 9.5 User Guide for VMware vSphere: https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backup/vsphere/overview.html?ver=95

• Creating Backup Jobs, https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backup/vsphere/backup_job.html?ver=95

• Backup Copy, https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backup/vsphere/backup_copy.html?ver=95

• Backup Proxy, https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backup/vsphere/backup_proxy.html?ver=95

• Data Recovery, https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backup/vsphere/data_recovery.html?ver=95

• Instant VM Recovery, https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backup/vsphere/instant_recovery.html?ver=95

• GFS Retention Policy, https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backup/vsphere/backup_copy_gfs.html?ver=95

Veeam Backup & Replication version 9.x with HPE StoreOnce Catalyst Configuration Guide http://h20195.www2.hpe.com/V2/GetDocument.aspx?docname=4AA6-4336ENW

HPE StoreOnce Backup QuickSpecs http://h20195.www2.hpe.com/V2/GetDocument.aspx?docname=c04328820

Veeam Backup & Replication 9.5 PowerShell Reference: Getting Started https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backup/powershell/getting_started.html?ver=95

Veeam Backup & Replication 9.5 User Guide for Microsoft Hyper-V: Data Compression and Deduplication https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backup/hyperv/compression_deduplication.html?ver=95

Backup Copy – Animation of Retention veeam.com/kb1931

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