Limitations for Veeam Cloud Connect Backup

Veeam Backup & Replication has the following limitations for cloud repository usage:

Backup, Backup Copy and Restore

1. Veeam Backup & Replication does not support backup copy jobs if the cloud repository is used as a source backup repository. The backup copy job must use a backup repository configured locally on the tenant side as a source one.
2. Transaction log backup is not supported for backup jobs targeted at the cloud repository. You can back up transaction logs only with backup copy jobs in the immediate copy mode.
3. Instant VM Recovery, multi-OS file-level restore, restore to Microsoft Azure, Amazon EC2 and Nutanix AHV from backups in the cloud repository are not supported.
4. Removed GFS restore points might remain displayed in the Veeam Backup & Replication UI on the tenant side. To refresh the list of restore points, disable the job that created the restore points and rescan the SP in the tenant Veeam backup console.

File Operations

Tenants can manually copy backup files to and from the cloud repository using the Files view in the Veeam Backup & Replication console. Scheduled file copy jobs are not supported.

Scale-Out Backup Repositories Used as Cloud Repositories

1. The SP cannot expose a scale-out backup repository as a cloud repository if unlimited number of concurrent tasks is specified for at least one extent added to this scale-out backup repository.
2. Tenants cannot use the Files view in the Veeam Backup & Replication console to copy backup files to and from a scale-out backup repository exposed as a cloud repository. Such cloud repositories are displayed in the tenant Veeam Backup & Replication console in the read-only mode.

Deduplicating Storage Appliances Used as Cloud Repositories

It is not recommended to use deduplicating storage appliances as cloud repositories. To protect VM data that is backed up to the cloud repository, tenants are likely to use data encryption. For deduplicating storage appliances, encrypted data blocks appear as different though they may contain duplicate data. Thus, deduplicating storage appliances will not provide the expected deduplication ratio. To learn more, see the Data Encryption section in the Veeam Backup & Replication User Guide.

If the SP uses a deduplicating storage appliance as a cloud repository, the SP must consider the following limitations.

General

To keep track of tenant quota consumption, Veeam Backup & Replication uses information about the size of backed-up data reported by a backup repository. A backup repository calculates the size of backed-up data based on the size of source data before deduplication. As a result, the actual size of tenant backup data in the cloud repository may be significantly smaller than the reported used space. The difference depends on whether the tenant uses data encryption and on the backup repository type.

This approach leads to the following consequences:

• The tenant does not gain advantage from using data deduplication other than native  deduplication and compression provided by Veeam and performed within a backup job.

• Tenant backup jobs may fail to back up data to a cloud repository even in case deduplicating storage has free storage space.

To overcome this limitation, it is recommended that the SP over-provisions storage space on the deduplicating storage appliance used as a cloud repository.

Consider the following example:

• The tenant backs up VMs whose total size is 80 GB.
• The tenant quota size is 100 GB, and it is allocated on a deduplicating storage appliance used as a cloud repository.
• On deduplicating storage, tenant VM backup data consumes 30 GB.

In this case, the backup repository will display that used storage space is 80 GB, and the tenant will be able to back up additional 20 GB, and not 70 GB. To let the tenant back up the total amount of 100 GB of data, the SP needs to use over-provisioning.

Dell Data Domain

Consider the following:

• The length of forward incremental and forever forward incremental backup chains that contain one full backup and a set of subsequent incremental backups cannot be greater than 60 restore points. To overcome this limitation, the tenant can do the following:

• For backup jobs, the tenant can schedule full backups (active or synthetic) to split the backup chain into shorter series. For example, to perform backups at 30-minute intervals, 24 hours a day, the tenant must schedule synthetic full backups every day. In this scenario, intervals immediately after midnight may be skipped due to duration of synthetic processing.
• For backup copy jobs, the tenant can specify the necessary number of restore points in the backup copy job settings. The number of restore points in the backup chain must be less than 60.

If the SP plans to use Dell Data Domain as a cloud repository, it is strongly recommended that the SP informs tenants about limitations for the backup chain length.

• If the SP uses Dell Data Domain as a cloud repository, and the tenant enables data encryption in the properties of a backup job targeted at this repository, it is recommended that the SP does not select the Decompress backup data blocks before storing check box in the backup repository settings. If this check box is selected in such a case, the size of backup files created by the backup job will exceed the original size of the source data. For more information, see the Limitations for Dell Data Domain section in the Veeam Backup & Replication User Guide.

HPE StoreOnce

Veeam Backup & Replication does not support usage of HPE StoreOnce deduplicating storage appliances as cloud repositories.

If the SP plans to use a scale-out backup repository as a cloud repository, they should consider the following limitations:

1. The SP cannot add an HPE StoreOnce appliance as an extent to a scale-out repository that is used as a cloud repository.
2. The SP cannot use a scale-out backup repository as a cloud repository if an HPE StoreOnce appliance is added as an extent to this scale-out backup repository.