Backing up Veeam files to google drive

[Shadow_Walker]

Just testing some bits out and want to find a way to backup Veeam files to google drive. So currently the school has on site backups and is done using Veeam which saves the Veeam files to the SAN. Currently they are using reverse incremental backups with 1 month retention. The school also has a backup in our datacentre which has retention of 6 months.

 

Question is how can i get the Veeam files to google drive. I want it to backup the vrb files and also the vbk file. I want it to only copy new files from source folder to destination and want it scheduled. Is this something i can do with robocopy or robo mirror?

Edited September 9, 2019 by Shadow_Walker

[kmount]

Hello,

 

With reverse incrementals the large vbk changes on each run so you can't just lift the vrbs each time.

 

With forward incrementals you could lift the vbk when it's created and then subsequent vrbs until a new full is created when the vbk will need go up again.

 

Are the longer retention backups held in your datacentre configured as normal backup jobs or a gfs style copy job? (thinking around how long the files remain static)

 

Are the sizes involved making this a daily (or more frequently) endeavour or is this more about extending the retention out using Google drive for longer archive?

 

Thanks,

 

Kim

[Shadow_Walker]

Ok but can we still just backup one way, the latest vbm file will be deleted from the source folder but will still be in the google folder and i will have a copy of the new vbk each time in google so surely that is good.

[kmount]

Hi there,

 

The vbm file is less interesting when you only have a vbk so I wouldn't worry too much about that. (ie. Take a vbk to another machine with veeam even free and double click it and it will imort fine)

 

Your thinking is fine if you can copy that huge(?) vbk up before it gets replaced during the next job run.

 

Something like stablebit cloud drive would be worth a look. Google file stream can present a drive letter but I'm not sure it'll be fluid enough.

[jtotheb]

Question is how can i get the Veeam files to google drive. I want it to backup the vrb files and also the vbk file. I want it to only copy new files from source folder to destination and want it scheduled. Is this something i can do with robocopy or robo mirror?

 

Veeam used to bundle a third-party product with the cloud edition of Backup and Replication before they had their own cloud platform product. It's called Cloudberry Backup and we still use it to upload Veeam backup files to an online storage provider as we got a grandfathered perpetual licence when Veeam unbundled it.

 

The Cloudberry job is backing up the folder(s) that contain Veeam backups to the cloud provider. That Cloudberry job is triggered by the "Run the following script after the job" option on the individual Veeam jobs.

 

Might be worth a look, but I couldn't tell you how expensive, or not, it is to buy now.

[FragglePete]

We use a Synology NAS unit (DS-1815+) to copy our backups too. The Synology OS has a number of packages you can install and one of them is Cloud Sync that enables you to replicate a share up to many Cloud Drives, and Google Drive is supported. I've got an additional copy job that encrypts the backups to a specific repository on the NAS unit which gets squirted up to Google Drive when it sees any changes. The NAS unit itself does encryption as well if so required. I've only got our 'mission critical' stuff on it at the moment so I can monitor and test it but will expand it in the near future if it works well - which it seems to do.

 

Pete

[Primus]

I've been doing this with CloudBerry but I have had issues downloading our bigger VMs back down from Google Drive - eg. the file server. Therefore I'd recommend thorough testing

[Jaan]

We wanted to do this with veeam also. There are upload limits.

 

[TwistedHelixis]

We stopped using Cloudberry a while back, we had restore issues.

 

Anyway back to OP, could you not use Googles own Backup and sync tool, but perhaps disable the sync and only use the backup part? This is how I migrated all our data drives to the cloud.

[Primus]

The restore issue we had wasn't related to how we'd got them into Google Drive. It was related to how large the file was and the download timing out after so many hours.

 

We found there was definitely an upload bandwidth restriction - though obviously space is actually unlimted.

[FragglePete]

I'm giving this a test now. After all, it's ain't a backup unless you've tested it! I'm just pulling down the folder that contains our SIMS Server backup files. It's taking a while to zip it up first, and then we'll see what happens.

 

Pete

[Jaan]

I'm giving this a test now. After all, it's ain't a backup unless you've tested it! I'm just pulling down the folder that contains our SIMS Server backup files. It's taking a while to zip it up first, and then we'll see what happens.

 

Pete

 

Is this still Zipping?

[CHiLL]

We have VEEAM creating synthetic backups and we copy these to Google Drive using RClone over a weekend on a monthly schedule. We have a two other NAS devices in other buildings with 'air gaps' for disaster recovery if the backup SAN dies or something. These Google backups are purely for if we lose all three buildings in a, well, disaster. Therefore we have deemed it acceptable to only keep monthly backup files in Google Drive.

 

It's worth noting that Google have a throttling measure in place - when you reach 750GB in a 24 hour period, they massively throttle you. So if you do need to recover from a disaster, take the time to download into account. We'd consider taking NAS devices to local schools with fast Internet connections and getting some downloading there

[mavhc]

Is the 750GB limited for download as well as upload?

[dhicks]

It's worth noting that Google have a throttling measure in place - when you reach 750GB in a 24 hour period, they massively throttle you.

 

Ah, good to know - I've always wondered what the limit for Google Drive traffic might be. We're just setting up Veeam now in what sounds like a similar way, my plan is to sync from our local backups to Backblaze using RClone. I've set up a separate Veeam backup for each VM we want to backup, that way we get a separate .vbk file for each VM. If we do ever need to restore from the cloud backup we can then at least prioratise which VMs we restore first, rather than having to try and download one huge backup file all in one go.

[CHiLL]

Is the 750GB limited for download as well as upload?

I believe the upload limit is 750GB and the download limit 9-10TB, both are for a 24-hour period. The University of Utah have a documentation on it for their usecase. https://www.chpc.utah.edu/documentation/software/rclone.php

 

Ah, good to know - I've always wondered what the limit for Google Drive traffic might be. We're just setting up Veeam now in what sounds like a similar way, my plan is to sync from our local backups to Backblaze using RClone. I've set up a separate Veeam backup for each VM we want to backup, that way we get a separate .vbk file for each VM. If we do ever need to restore from the cloud backup we can then at least prioratise which VMs we restore first, rather than having to try and download one huge backup file all in one go.

Yeah. As I've just mentioned, the 750GB is upload only and not download. At the time of pulling the data to fully restore your server infrastructure, you're going to be limited by your download speed. Then like you said, you can prioritise which servers to restore first and download another whilst it's restoring.

[mavhc]

750GB/day is 64Mbps, so not that much of a restriction, and rclone has a crypt system for encrypting the files as they're sent, set it up for home yesterday, should only take 1.5 years to backup my stuff

[PotNoodleTech]

Interesting idea! Might try this as a way of keeping a monthly offsite.