Backblaze is a proud partner of Veeam and is fully compatible with Veeam Cloud Tier. Additionally, Backblaze is certified as Veeam Ready - Object and Veeam Ready - Object with Immutability. Immutability is an important part of protecting backups from threats such as ransomware or stolen credentials by ensuring your backed-up data is safe and secure for a specified timeframe.

This guide will walk you through how to recover from B2 Cloud Storage as part of a Scale-Out Backup Repository when you lose access to your primary backup environment and need to recover in a completely new Veeam Backup & Replication environment wherever that may reside.

Please note that this guide only applies to Enterprise and Enterprise Plus editions of Veeam Backup & Replication and Veeam Availability Suite.

Test Environment

App: Veeam Backup and Replication Version 10.0.1.4852

OS: Windows Server 2016

Compute Host: Equinix Metal

Cloud Storage: Backblaze B2

Scenario Objective

1. Access to the primary backup environment and repositories are unavailable.
2. SOBR (Scale-Out Backup Repository) is configured with a Backblaze B2 Cloud repository.
3. Windows Compute Engine needs to be created
4. Veeam Backup and Recovery of the same version needs to be installed on Windows Compute Engine.
5. Import Backups from Cloud Repository in Backblaze B2.
6. Restore VM files.

Assumptions
Windows Compute Engine and Veeam Backup and Recovery software can be installed by customers with the assistance of the hosting provider and Veeam documentation.

If you need assistance with installing Veeam in your environment, please see their website here: https://www.veeam.com/videos/how-to-install-backup-replication-16156.html

Table of Contents

Add Local Storage as a Repository

Add Your Existing B2 Bucket as a new Object Storage Repository

Importing Cloud Repository

Restoring your files

Add Local Storage as a Repository

To create a Scale-Out Backup Repository, you must first add a local storage component as a Backup Repository. You can follow these steps to do so.

1)  Launch Veeam on your Windows Server and click "Connect".

2) Navigate to the "Backup Infrastructure" section and click on "Backup Repositories" in the left-hand column.

3) Click the "Add Repository" button on the ribbon at the top of the window

4) Select "Direct attached storage" 

5) Choose "Microsoft Windows" 

6) Give your Repository a Name and Description and click "Next"

7) Click "Populate" and click on the drive you wish to use. Once it’s highlighted, click "Next" to continue. In this example, we’ve highlighted the E drive.

8) On the next window you may specify a folder on the drive by clicking "Browse". By default, Veeam will create a folder called “Backups” at the root of the drive. Once you’ve selected your choice, click the "Next" button to advance.

9) Click "Next" and then "Apply" on the two following screens to Apply the settings. Once the Apply page shows green checkmarks for each step, click "Next".

10) Click "Finish" on the Summary page.

11) In the popup asking you to change the configuration to the new repo, click "No".

Congratulations! You’ve set up a local Repository to use in your Scale-Out Backup Repository. You should now see it in the Backup Repositories section along with the Default Backup Repository.

Add Your Existing B2 Bucket as a new Object Storage Repository

1)  On the Backup Repositories screen, click the "Add Repository" button.

2) Select "Object storage" to continue

4) On the next screen, select "S3 Compatible"

5) Enter a name for the Repository and click "Next"

6) Add the S3 Endpoint you gathered earlier and enter it in the Service Point field. Then, enter the 2nd part of the S3 Endpoint (in this example it is ‘us-west-001’). After you’ve done this, click the "Add..." button to enter your B2 credentials.

7) In the Access Key field, enter your keyID. And in the Secret Key field, enter your applicationKey. Then enter a description if you like and click "OK".

8) You’ll now see the Credentials field populated. Proceed by clicking the "Next" button.

9) In the Bucket dropdown, select the bucket you created and then click the "Browse..." button to make a folder in your bucket for the Veeam backups.

10) In the popup, click the "New Folder" button, type in a name for your folder, then press the Enter key. Then click the "OK" button to proceed.

10a) Now enable immutability on your backup by clicking the "Make recent backups immutable" box and entering the number of days you would like your files locked for. Please note that you must have selected a bucket with Object Lock enabled and be using a newly created Application Key. Backblaze strongly recommends you utilize this immutability feature to protect your organization from ransomware.

You can read more about Object Lock and B2 here.

11) Click the "Next" button to save the configuration and proceed to the Summary page. You can then click "Finish"

The Repository you just created should now appear in the "Backup Repositories" section

Importing Cloud Repository

Veeam documentation on Importing Object Storage

Now that you have added the B2 Cloud Repository to your new Veeam environment, Rescan, for the repositories to synchronize.

Now that you have rescanned, you will need to Import Backups into the local repository.

Select the B2 Cloud Repository, and click "Import Backups"

Select, Yes

Click, Next

Click, Finish

Summary of Successful Import

Restoring your files

1. Go back to the Home, on the Bottom Left
2. Select the "BACKUP" tab, on top Left
3. Choose, "Object Storage (Imported)", on the left pane
4. Select the VM Backup you wish to Restore
5. Choose, "VM Files", for this exercise. As you can see from the other options, there are many other ways to restore depending on your environment capabilities.

6. Choose the available restore point you wish to restore and click, "Next"

7. Choose which files to restore and the Destination Path and click, "Next"

Click "Finish", to start the restoration process.

Summary shows the success of the files restored.

Now, that you have your VM files, you can import them into the hypervisor to complete your VM restore.

For more complex restoration scenarios, please refer to Veeam documentation and support for assistance.

If you have any questions about B2, please feel free to reach out to our Support Team via our website here: https://www.backblaze.com/help.html