With innovations like change block tracked backup, a scalable repository, and instant recovery, IT professionals should prioritize optimizing Veeam backup storage. Without proper optimization of the backup architecture, IT can’t realize the full potential of Veeam’s innovations.
Veeam Backup Storage Needs Flash
The granular data movement capabilities of Veeam’s change block tracking (CBT) backups enable customers to increase backup frequency which should improve recovery point objectives (RPO). The problem is that while CBT backups are easy on the network, they require a lot of random IO performance from the backup target.
The IO profile of CBT IO profile is highly randomized and needs a storage system to respond to that randomization. Hard disk technology can’t keep pace with dozens or even hundreds of simultaneous backup jobs landing on the backup storage target every hour. Flash storage, however, can handle these high-frequency backups, and it should be a component of every backup storage target.
Veeam Backup Storage Needs Hard Disks
While flash storage is critical to improving RPO, we are not at a point where an all-flash backup storage target makes sense. Flash is still too expensive to compete with hard disk drives. An 18TB hard disk drive is 1/10th the price of a 15TB flash drive.
Most legacy vendors shy away from using high-density hard disk drives for fear of customers’ slow recovery from drive failure complaints. We repeatedly speak to IT professionals that tell us they are experiencing RAID rebuild times over three days with 8TB drives, let alone 18TB drives, which will take even longer.
Veeam Backup Storage Needs Flexible Immutability
Veeam is doing an excellent job advancing state-of-the-art ransomware detection and protection. However, you can never have enough immutability. Protection from ransomware attacks requires instant immutability across all protocols without transferring to another storage silo. You also need to make sure any instantly recovered virtual machines or applications can be protected until you can ensure the environment is clear of any remnants of the malware.
You Need Production Class Recovery
Veeam’s instant recovery feature is a critical innovation that enables a virtual machine’s data to be instantiated on the backup storage target, eliminating network transfer time. The problem is that legacy backup storage devices don’t have the performance or availability to provide a production-class environment, forcing IT to move that VM into production quickly. Also, if the data center is experiencing a ransomware attack, instantly recovered VMs data is exposed to reinfection.
StorONE’s Backup is Optimized for Veeam
StorONE’s S1:Backup is optimized to elevate Veeam’s innovation. Its flash-first technology enables the rapid ingest of data. You can improve RPO by executing dozens of simultaneous backup jobs. However, StorONE’s S1:Backup is not flash-only. We intelligently integrate flash and hard disk drives to deliver performance and affordable long-term cost savings.
S1:Backup provides immutability within seconds of the completion of each backup job. There is no data transfer to an immutable secondary volume or a secondary storage system. While S1:Backup supports S3, you can also enjoy immutability across all block and file protocols.
Finally, S1:Backup provides a production class recovery environment within the same storage system. During a recovery, flash is dynamically reallocated so that capacity is available to host instantly recovered VMs and applications. The solution has built-in high availability and provides the same immutable protection of the instantly recovered VMs that it does for backup data.
StorONE, ONE backup solution for Veeam
StorONE rewrote the IO stack, and we own the entire IO path as data travels through our platform.
We also rewrote erasure coding to deliver the fastest recovery from drive failure. We even optimized tiering to accommodate the backup use case.
Combining these innovations means StorONE can deliver consistently high performance from a handful of flash drives, affordably meeting your RPO and RTO demands. It also means you can safely use high-density hard disk drives as our vRAID recovers from a drive failure of even the highest density hard disk drives in less than three hours. You can also seamlessly integrate new higher density drives without needing to create new volumes and reconfigure backup jobs. Optimizing Veeam Backup Storage with S1:Backup also provides 360° Ransomware Protection.
See You At VeeamON 2023!
Join StorONE at VeeamON May 22-24 in Miami. We’ll be at booth S2 and are pre-booking demos. Click here to reserve your 1 on 1 demo time.
You can also watch our webinar to learn more: “Four Ways to Optimize Veeam Backup and Recovery.”
