Quickstart Guide for offloading Veeam Cloud Tier backups to Backblaze B2 with immutability

Quickstart Guide for offloading Veeam Cloud Tier backups to Backblaze B2 with immutability

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 backup data is safe and secure for a specified timeframe.

This guide will walk you through how to set up B2 Cloud Storage as part of a Scale-Out Backup Repository with Immutability in Veeam using our S3 Compatibility API. To protect against ransomware, Backblaze strongly recommends all Veeam customers to enable immutability when offloading their backups to Backblaze B2 using Cloud Tier.

Please note that this guide only applies to Enterprise and Enterprise Plus editions of Veeam Backup & Replication and Veeam Availability Suite. Other editions can backup to B2 using our partner Tiger Bridge. A guide for setting this up can be found here.

If you need assistance with installing Veeam in your environment, please see their website.

A 20-minute video walk-through is also available below:

Table of Contents

Get your B2 Application Key and S3 Endpoint

Add Local Storage as a Repository

Add B2 as a Repository

Create the Scale-Out Backup Repository

Create a Backup Job

Get your B2 Application Key and S3 Endpoint

Begin this guide by signing in to your Backblaze account. If you do not have an account, please sign up here.

1) Log in to your account at www.Backblaze.com and click the Buckets link in the left-hand column. Once here, click the Create a Bucket button.

2) Give your Bucket a unique name and click Create a Bucket with Object Lock enabled. Object Lock allows Immutability in Veeam to prevent your files from being changed. To protect your offloaded backups from ransomware, Backblaze strongly recommends you enable object lock and use the Veeam immutability feature. You can read more about Object Lock here.

3) You will now see your Bucket on the Buckets page. Note the S3 Endpoint listed here for use later when setting up B2 with Veeam. Leave Lifecycle Settings at the default "Keep all versions". 

4) Now click the App Keys link in the left-hand column to navigate to the App Keys page and click Add a New Application Key. Note that your Master Application Key will not be usable with Veeam Cloud Tier or our S3 compatible API.

5) Give your key a name and leave the other default settings. Then click Create New Key. 

6) In a blue box on the App Keys page you’ll now see the keyID and applicationKey listed here, along with the S3 Endpoint we saw when making the bucket. Make sure you copy the keyID and applicationKey listed somewhere safe as the applicationKey will NOT be available again to view once you leave the page.

Now that you have the applicationKey, keyID, and S3 Endpoint you are ready to start setting up the Repository in Veeam.

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 in the following window

5) Select Microsoft Windows 

6) Give your Repository a Name and Description, then 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. Then click Finish on the following Summary page. 

Congratulations! You’ve set up a Local Repository to use in your Scale Out Backup Repository. Find it in the Backup Repositories section of your Backup Infrastructure.

Add B2 as a Repository

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

2) Select Object storage

4) Select S3 Compatible

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

6) Add the S3 Endpoint you gathered earlier and enter it as your Service point. Then, enter the 2nd part of the S3 Endpoint (in this example it is ‘us-east-005’). 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 and click OK.

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

9) In the Bucket section, click Browse. Select the bucket you created then click OK.

10) In the Folder section, click Browse. Click New Folder. Give your folder a name, press Enter to create the Folder, then click OK. 

10a) Enable immutability on your backup by clicking the "Make recent backups immutable for" 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 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. Then click Finish on the following Summary page.

Congratulations! You’ve set up your Backblaze B2 Repository to use in your Scale Out Backup Repository. Find it in the Backup Repositories section of your Backup Infrastructure.

Create the Scale Out Backup Repository

1) Click on Scale-out Repositories in the left-hand column and click the Add Scale-out Repository button.

2) Add a name and description for the Scale-out Backup Repository and click Next.

3) On the Performance Tier page, click the Add button.

4) Check the box of the Local Repository you created earlier in this guide. Then click Next to proceed.

5) Click Next to accept the default setting of Data Locality.

6) In the Capacity Tier page, check the "Extend scale-out backup repository capacity with object storage" then click Choose...

7) Select your Backblaze B2 Repository you created earlier in this guide. Click OK. 

8) Define the time windows. In this guide, we recommend selecting "Copy backups to object storage as soon as they are created", which will make a copy of your backups on both Tiers. Once you make your selections, click Apply and then Finish once the Repository has been created.

Congratulations! You’ve set up your Scale Out Repository to use in your Backup Job. Find it in the Scale-out Repositories section of your Backup Infrastructure.

Create a Backup Job

1) Click the Home option in the bottom-left, and then click Jobs in the browser.

2) Click the Backup Job button in the top-left corner of the window, then choose Virtual machine...

3) Enter a name and description for the Backup Job, then click Next.

4) Click the Add button, select the Virtual Machine(s) you would like backed up, and click Add when done.

5) Once you have all the Virtual Machines added you would like backed up to B2, click the Next button.

6) Change the Backup Repository dropdown to the Scale-out Backup Repository you made earlier, then click the Advanced button.

7) Navigate to the Storage tab and change the Storage Optimization dropdown to "4MB”. Then click OK and Next to proceed.

Note: While this setting is optional, B2 is designed to work better with larger block sizes and this will greatly help to improve the performance of uploading to B2 by Veeam.

8) Click Next to proceed to the Schedule settings. You may set the Schedule as you like for the backup job. For our example, we have set this to run every day at 10 PM. Click Apply to view the Summary.

9) If you’d like to run the first backup immediately, check the box for “Run the job when I click Finish”. Then click Finish.

Congratulations! You've set up a Backup Job pointing to a Scale-out Repository using B2 Cloud Storage and Immutability. 

Again, Backblaze strongly recommends all Veeam customers enable Object Lock in Backblaze B2 and Immutability in Veeam to protect against ransomware. If you have a valid reason for not protecting against ransomware and do not want to enable immutability, please contact our support team for detailed instructions on how this can be enabled.

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