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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 eectively. !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 dierence 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
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1.2. The current OneBlox software works best with a single
backup stream. Configure this as shown in
Figure 2 below.
Veeam Best Practice with Exablox, v.8.2 | page 2
Figure 1: Adding a repository for OneBlox
Figure 2: Limiting concurrent backups to one
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!1.3. To improve OneBlox deduplication, please select the Align
backup file data blocks option as
shown in Figure 3 below.
!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.
Veeam Best Practice with Exablox, v.8.2 | page 3
Figure 4: Creating a Backup Job and selecting
Figure 3: Setting Align file data
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!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
Figure 5: Choosing Incremental backups with synthetic fulls
Figure 6: Disabling deduplication and compression as well as
selecting a local target
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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