How Capacity Tier Works

A typical capacity tier environment consists of one or more scale-out backup repositories that encompasses the following:

• One or more extents.
• One object storage repository.

Every 4 hours Veeam collects the backup data from the extents and transfers it to object storage according to policies that define how and when such data should be offloaded.

To offload the backup data, Veeam uses the SOBR Offload job, which does the following:

• Verifies whether backup chains located on the extents satisfy validation criteria and, therefore, must be offloaded to object storage.
• Collects verified backup chains from each extent and sends them directly to object storage in the form of blocks.
• Saves each session results to the configuration database so that you can review them upon request.

For more information, see SOBR Offload Job.

Configuring Capacity Tier

To configure a capacity tier environment, do the following:

• Add one or more backup repositories (or use existing ones) that would be used as your extents.

For more information, see Adding Backup Repositories.

• Add an object storage repository that is targeted to a cloud-based object storage.

For more information, see Adding Object Storage Repositories.

• Create a scale-out backup repository (or modify an existing one) and add the extents you have created at the step one.

For more information, see Adding Scale-Out Repositories.

• Augment your scale-out backup repository with an object storage repository and configure policies that will define how and when your backup data should be offloaded.

For more information, see Add Capacity Tier.

• Create a backup job and map this job to a scale-out backup repository.

For more information, see Specify Backup Storage Settings.

Managing Capacity Tier Data

You can do the following with the backup data in object storage:

• Restore offloaded backup data directly from object storage back to your production servers or to Azure or Amazon EC2 could platforms.

For more information, see Data Restore.

• Download offloaded backup data from object storage back to the source extents.

For more information, see Managing Capacity Tier Data.

• Manage retention policies to purge obsolete restore points from both the extents and object storage.

For more information, see Retention Policy.