HPE StoreOnce

You can use HPE StoreOnce storage appliances as backup repositories.

To work with HPE StoreOnce, Veeam Backup & Replication leverages the HPE StoreOnce Catalyst technology and two HPE StoreOnce components:

• HPE StoreOnce Catalyst agent. The HPE StoreOnce Catalyst agent is a component of the HPE StoreOnce Catalyst software. The HPE StoreOnce Catalyst agent is embedded into the Veeam Data Mover setup. When you add a Microsoft Windows server to the backup infrastructure, the HPE StoreOnce Catalyst agent is automatically installed on the added server together with Veeam Data Mover.
• HPE StoreOnce appliance. The HPE StoreOnce appliance is an HPE StoreOnce storage system on which Catalyst stores are created.

HPE StoreOnce Deployment

To communicate with HPE StoreOnce, Veeam Backup & Replication uses two Data Movers that are responsible for data processing and transfer:

• Veeam Data Mover on the VMware backup proxy
• Veeam Data Mover on the gateway server

The HPE StoreOnce storage cannot host Veeam Data Mover. For this reason, to communicate with the HPE StoreOnce storage, you need to deploy a gateway server. Veeam Backup & Replication will automatically deploy Veeam Data Mover on this gateway server. For more information, see Gateway Server. For communicating with the HPE StoreOnce storage appliances, the gateway server must run a 64-bit Microsoft Windows version.

When any job addresses the backup repository, Veeam Data Mover on the gateway server establishes a connection with Veeam Data Mover on the VMware backup proxy, enabling efficient data transfer over LAN or WAN.

The gateway server is selected when you assign a backup repository role to the HPE StoreOnce appliance. You can define the gateway server explicitly or instruct Veeam Backup & Replication to select it automatically.

Limitations and Recommendations for HPE StoreOnce

Check that HPE StoreOnce that you plan to use is supported. For more information, see Backup Target.

If you plan to use HPE StoreOnce storage appliances for NAS backup, mind the following recommendations for optimal performance:

• A StoreOnce system can have multiple Catalyst stores, and large backup loads (exceeding 1PB) should be spread across more than one Catalyst store on the same StoreOnce system.
• Do not include Catalyst stores in a SOBR intended for NAS backups. This will reduce the global deduplication of the StoreOnce system.

If you plan to use HPE StoreOnce as a backup repository for Veeam Plug-in for Oracle RMAN or Veeam Plug-in for SAP HANA, the total number of stored files (data and metadata) must not exceed 3,000,000 per Catalyst store. If necessary, multiple Catalyst stores may be created on the same StoreOnce system.

If you plan to use HPE StoreOnce as a backup repository for other jobs, mind the following limitations. Limitations apply only if you use HPE StoreOnce in the integration mode, not the shared folder mode.

• When you create a job targeted at HPE StoreOnce, Veeam Backup & Replication will offer you to switch to optimized job settings and use the 4 MB size of data block for VM data processing. It is recommended that you use optimized job settings. Large data blocks produce a smaller metadata table that requires less memory and CPU resources to process.

• The HPE StoreOnce backup repository usually works in the Use per-machine backup files mode. For more information, see Backup Storage Formats. However, there are cases when the HPE StoreOnce backup repository can store not only per-machine backups, for example, when backups are evacuated to this repository from other extents in a SOBR. For more information, see Evacuating Backups from Performance Extents. Mind that restore from such backups can last longer than from per-machine backups.

• We recommend against enabling encryption for the jobs targeted at the deduplication storage appliance. Encryption has a negative effect on the deduplication ratio. For more information, see Data Encryption.

• HPE StoreOnce does not support the reverse incremental backup method.
• For backup jobs, HPE StoreOnce does not support the forever forward incremental backup method. When creating a backup job, you must enable synthetic and/or active full backups. For more information on how to enable such backups, see Backup Settings.

• The HPE StoreOnce backup repository does not support the Defragment and compact full backup file option.
• You cannot use HPE StoreOnce backup repositories as sources or targets for file copy jobs.
• You cannot copy backup files (VBK, VIB and VRB) manually to the HPE StoreOnce backup repository. To copy such files, use backup copy jobs or evacuate backups if you use a scale-out backup repository.
• You cannot use the HPE StoreOnce backup repository as a cloud repository hosted behind a Cloud Connect Gateway server.
• Considering possible bandwidth and latency constraints, Veeam recommends inline with the HPE guidelines the usage of HPE Cloud Volumes Backups as a secondary target repository, meaning that it is ideally used as a target for backup copy jobs with enabled HPE Catalyst Copy.

• To optimize data transfer between two HPE StoreOnce repositories, use backup copy jobs with HPE Catalyst Copy enabled. For more information on how to create jobs and recommendations for them, see Creating Backup Copy Jobs for HPE StoreOnce Repositories.

• HPE StoreOnce has a limit on the number of concurrently opened files. Due to this limit, the maximum length of backup chains (chains that contain one full backup and a set of subsequent incremental backups) on HPE StoreOnce is also limited and depends on the particular storage model (see the following table).

Several Backup Repositories on HPE StoreOnce

You can configure several backup repositories on one HPE StoreOnce appliance and associate them with different gateway servers.

Mind the following:

• If you configure several backup repositories on HPE StoreOnce and add them as extents to a scale-out backup repository, make sure that all backup files from one backup chain are stored on one extent. If backup files from one backup chain are stored to different extents, the performance of transformation processes will be lower. For more information about transformation performance, see this Veeam blog post.
• HPE StoreOnce has a limit on the number of opened files that applies to the whole appliance. Tasks targeted at different backup repositories on HPE StoreOnce and run in parallel will equally share this limit.
• For HPE StoreOnce working over Fibre Channel, there is a limitation on the number of connections from one host. If you connect several backup repositories to one gateway, backup repositories will compete for connections.

• Deduplication on HPE StoreOnce works within the limits of one object store.

• If your VMs contain similar data, it is recommended to create backup repositories on a single HPE StoreOnce Catalyst Store. This minimizes backup job duration and reduces disk space used for backups. For details, see this Veeam KB article.

For more information and recommendations on working with HPE StoreOnce, see this Veeam KB article.

Related Topics

• Operational Modes
• HPE StoreOnce Supported Features
• Adding Backup Repositories