This article is intended for administrators wishing to leverage StorMagic SvSAN, to provide resilient synchronously mirrored, cached and encrypted storage, alongside and HPE StoreOnce to provide file storage, compression, deduplication and replication technologies.
Information
StorMagic SvSAN
Any x86 server
https://stormagic.com/svsan/
HPE StoreOnce
HPE StoreOnce is specially designed for disk-based, deduplication, cloud-integrated backup systems that provide automated backup, data recovery, and data retention for hybrid IT.
HPE StoreOnce deduplication reduces the disk space required to store backup data sets by typically 20 times without impacting backup performance. By retaining more backup data on disk for longer, it enables greater accessibility to backup data for quick restoration of lost or damaged files and reduces the impact on business productivity, while providing savings on disk storage costs, computing resources, physical space, and power requirements.
The format to store our backup is very flexible, NAS, (NFS, CIFS (SMB), iSCSI, and virtual tape libraries FC (VTL) and StoreOnce Catalyst backup targets are available. This allows each StoreOnce system to be installed and used with all backup applications, including of course Veeam Backup & Replication.
HPE StoreOnce Catalyst
HPE StoreOnce Catalyst is an optimized interface for data protection, unique to HPE StoreOnce systems. It gives us the greater performance and more flexible control than traditional emulated tape targets (VTL) or NAS Shares. This means we can benefit from:
Simplified management of data movement from a single interface: tighter integration with our backup application to centrally manage file replication across the enterprise.
Seamless control in complex environments: Supports a number of flexible configurations that allow simultaneous movement of data from one site to multiple sites, and the ability to cascade data across the enterprise (sometimes referred to as “multi-hop”)
Improve performance: Distributed deduplication processing using StoreOnce Catalyst stores on StoreOnce systems and multiple servers can optimize the load and utilization of backup hardware, network links, and backup servers for faster deduplication and backup performance.
Scale with object storage to increase local system storage with the Cloud Bank extension to Catalyst.
Faster backup time to meet shrinking backup windows-up to 288 TB/hour of aggregate performance.
StoreOnce Catalyst prevents backup exposure to ransomware.
This last point is crucial, what makes StoreOnce HPE so attractive, is that although you can create lifetime NFS Shares and store backups there, it is recommended to use Stores that use Catalyst, a proprietary HPE API, with which Veeam communicates and can launch backups, and perform restores.
Backup Methodologies
Typically backup vendors reference "3-2-1".
https://www.veeam.com/blog/321-backup-rule.html
https://www.acronis.com/en-us/blog/posts/backup-rule/
Introducing SvSAN alongside backup ensures an even further resilient architecture is implemented with HA and SvSAN synchronous mirroring.
Use cases
The value proposition being:
1. SvSAN's hardware flexibility to build your own appliances to the use cases correct right size due to potential supply chain issues
2. Software based solutions
3. Eliminating single points of failure (SPOF) and connectivity (SPOC)
4. Creation of immutable, deduped, compressed and dual authorized backups to protect against critical data loss and ransomware attacks
Datacenter to dedicated HA backup servers
Datacenters are typically larger, multi-node clusters in a single environment with backups then needing to be take to separate physical hardware and then off-site. This to prevent the likes of Ransomware locking data to an irrecoverable point.
StoreOnce ensures backups are stored, via the Catalyst API, securely, immutably and deduped and compressed most efficiently. By leveraging SvSAN into this, the StoreOnce repository becomes highly available, within a datacenter, or in a stretched configuration, then potentially replicated.
Edge to Center
Example configuration and setup,
The below is and example configuration, being a single location of the edge to center use case, using 2x HPE DL380 servers, VMware vSphere, StorMagic SvSAN and HPE StoreOnce.
The hardware contained an internal HDD RAID10 set of 8x 1.2TB 10K SAS disks, alongside an SSD RAID1 set of 2x MU SSDs leveraged as SvSAN cache:
https://support.stormagic.com/hc/en-gb/articles/5887719016989-SvSAN-Caching
The hypervisor, ESXi 7.0.3, and the SvSAN VSA VM were deployed to separate disk based boot storage, e.g. HPE NS204i-u
or a split virtual disk configuration per the below:
The server internal storage was provisioned through the hypervisor to SvSAN as Raw Device Mappings:
This storage was then leveraged to present to the hypervisors as an SvSAN backed VMFS datastore to host the StoreOnce VSA and storage with Option 1 being a VMDK assigned to StoreOnce and Option 2 being a Raw Device Mapping of the SvSAN mirrored disk.
StoreOnce Deployment and configuration
The HPE StoreOnce software can be download with an HPE account
https://myenterpriselicense.hpe.com/cwp-ui/dashboard
Deploy the StoreOnce OVA, in this case via vCenter:
Browsing to the locally stored file.
to push into vCenter
Set the StoreOnce VSA VM name:
Select the ESXi host to deploy the StoreOnce VM to:
Review the OVF details:
Select the datastore to host the 252GB StoreOnce VSA VM OS disk
Select the network to connect the StoreOnce VSA VM to and manage the appliance:
Set the static IP details on the StoreOnce VSA VM:
Review the final deployment summary:
StoreOnce storage addition
Once deployed edit the StoreOnce VSA settings and add a disk.
Option 1 - VMDK assigned
In this example a 1TB thin provisioned disk was added on SCSI controller 0 on a separate, dedicated, SvSAN mirror disk backed VMFS datastore.
Confirm the disk settings and select OK to add:
Review the StoreOnce VSA VM storage:
Option 2 - RDM assigned storage
In this example a unformatted SvSAN mirrored disk was added to StoreOnce as a Raw Device Mapping through VMware, on SCSI controller 0.
Note: Ensure to asisgn virtual compatible, otherwise StoreOnce won't see the storage correctly!
Assign storage as a Virtual Compatible Raw Device Mapping
StoreOnce boot up configuration
Power on, booting the appliance
Enter the specified management IP into a browser and accept the self signed certificate
Start to configure the StoreOnce appliance VM
Set an Administrator password:
Set a Console password:
Set the system contact information:
Set time/NTP:
Select the deployment mode, in this example a single StoreOnce VSA appliance VM:
Configure the storage.
VMDK assigned:
Virtual compatible RDM assigned:
This may take a short time.
Once configured select OK to proceed to the next step:
Select whether to accept Remote Support:
Acknowledge:
Configure Dual authorization:
Complete the configuration wizard:
Login to the appliance and review the dashboard:
Example NAS share configured showing deduplication in action:
Backup configuration to replicate to another StoreOnce appliance.
See Also
https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backup/vsphere/deduplicating_appliance_storeonce.html?ver=110
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