Salaam, Namaste, Ola and Hello!

For those who are new to my blog welcome, and to those returning a big thanks! In my last series (https://iamitgeek.com/2019/04/15/veeam-cloud-connect-in-azure-part-1/ and https://iamitgeek.com/2019/04/17/veeam-cloud-connect-in-azure-part-2/) I discussed using Veeam Cloud Connect in Azure. Now this series was targeted at Managed Service Provider (MSP) type companies. In this weeks series I will discuss how to utilize Azure Blob storage via Veeam Backup & Replication.

In part one of this series I will go through an overview of the title topic, what requirements you need to meet for this feature, a brief description of the setup tasks you need to complete (I will go into full detail in part two of this series) and the benefits this feature can offer you as a business.

Overview: Earlier this year Veeam released version 9.5 Update 4 of their Backup & Replication product, and with this new release they have introduced the capability to scale out your on premises repository to cloud object storage including Azure Blob. The new feature allows backup admins to archive older backups into Azure blob storage by adding it into Veeam as a ‘Scale-out Repository’ rather than a standard backup repository. Most companies will already be backing up there data offsite in some shape or form (if you are not you should be!!), either in a secondary site owned by them or to a Service provider. In the first instance it requires you to have a building in a geographically separated location with some sort of Infrastructure in place. This type of setup can be very costly from a financial and time perspective, however Cloud object storage takes a lot of this away. In the second instance, Service Providers do take the headache of day to day management away, however I believe would struggle to match the cost efficiency of public cloud object storage.

Requirements: Before you can go ahead and utilize this feature you need to meet certain prerequisite requirements:

• Ensure Veeam Backup & Replication is updated to 9.5 update 4

As mentioned this is a new feature which is only currently available in update 4 of version 9.5 so this should really be your first step on this journey

• A pay as you go or CSP Azure Subscription

You will need to have an existing Azure subscription where you can create the storage required for this feature to work. If you are able to get your subscription via a CSP partner I would recommend doing this as it works out cheaper than using the standard pay as you go subscription.

Setup Tasks: You should be at the point where you have now successfully upgraded your on premises Veeam Backup & Replication management software to 9.5 update 4 and provisioned an Azure subscription. Other initial setup tasks include creating a storage account in Azure, provisioning the Blob container you will archive the backups in, add a scale-out repository pointing at the Azure blob and finally re-configuring your existing Veeam backup jobs to archive your backups to the blob storage.

Pros and Cons: Like everything in this world there are two sides to it, and really its about what suits you as the individual company. For me this latest feature has the following positives:

• Cost Effective – If you host your own offsite storage or use a service provider, Azure Blob storage costs will be more cost effective than both of these
• HA & better redundancy – your own Infrastructure or Service Providers cannot compete with the high availability and redundancy offered by Microsoft Azure. A lot of Service Providers will claim they can, but in reality losing more than one Data Center would be catastrophic, where as Microsoft could cope with potential multiple DC failures.
• Scale out to Cloud: For companies that need to keep older backups but do not necessarily want to spend additional on premises storage, this feature is ideal and allows you to scale and extend your on premises storage into the cloud.

And the cons:

• Potential Compliance issue: This all depends on your companies compliance policies when it comes to data, and using public cloud may not be an option due to this.

So it turned out to be ‘con’ rather the the plural but that’s my point, this latest feature has more positives than negatives.

That is it for part one, keep an eye out for part two where I will go into more details on how to configure the both the Azure Blob Storage and Veeam Backup jobs for this feature. Until next time, ‘IamITGeek’ over and out!