Since the release of Veeam Data Platform V12 in February of this year, customers have been strongly adopting this new release with its more than 500 new capabilities. This is especially true for Veeam and Pure Storage customers, for three main reasons.
- Universal Storage Application Programing Interface (USAPI) v2 Capabilities
- Direct-to-Object to FlashBlade
- End-to-end immutability
Embracing USAPI V2: Enhanced Storage Snapshot Integration
Veeam first introduced the USAPI v1 back in 2018 so storage companies could work with Veeam to develop storage snapshot integration. Pure developed one of the first plugins for Veeam’s USAPI v1, and it is one of the most widely adopted plugins on the market with thousands of Pure and Veeam customers leveraging this integration to perform things more efficiently like backup from storage snapshot and leverage application-consistent storage snapshots secondary use cases like dev/test.
With Veeam Data Platform V12, Veeam has released a major storage integration update with USAPI v2 (Pure Storage was Veeam’s development partner for this effort). This update, and the Pure plugin for USAPI v2, enable customers to create advanced storage snapshot orchestration directly from Veeam jobs. This includes asynchronous and synchronous storage snapshot replication, and the ability to archive storage snapshots to external storage (e.g. object storage bucket on FlashBlade) for long-term retention.
If you are interested in Veeam and Pure Storage USAPI v2 integration, please check out the white paper: Advanced Storage Snapshot Integration with Pure Storage FlashArray and Veeam Data Platform v12. Additionally, check out the three USAPI v2 short demonstration videos on Synchronous Storage Snapshot Replication, Asynchronous Storage Snapshot Replication, and Storage Snapshot Offload.
Harnessing Direct-to-Object to FlashBlade: Secure and Efficient Backup
A major capability of the Data Platform V12 release is the ability for Veeam to backup directly to object storage. This enables customers to benefit from the security, durability, and ease-of-use of object storage, and to standardize on it across their backup infrastructure, from the primary copy through the archive copy. Pure Storage FlashBlade offers S3-compatible object storage with three major advantages over other object storage offerings. The first is the all-flash performance Pure FlashBlade can achieve for both backups and recoveries (ESG Validation Report on Pure Storage FlashBlade ). The second is the simplicity and ease-of-use of the FlashBlade Purity web-based user interface. The final, and likely the most important, capability is storage and data security. Pure FlashBlade supports S3 Object Lock to protect the data against accidental or malicious destruction or modification, and SafeMode Retention Lock to protect against insider threats or the compromise of administrator credentials.
If you are interested in seeing what this looks like, please check out the Veeam Data Platform V12 and Pure FlashBlade Direct-to-Object short demonstration video.
End-to-End Immutability: A Game Changer in Data Protection
End-to-end immutability refers to the ability to protect all your critical storage assets, from the on-premises primary and backup storage to the offsite backup storage, whether that is at your own remote data center, a public cloud, or a backup-as-a-service (BaaS) offering.
With the V12 release from Veeam, and the recent Purity releases from Pure Storage, these capabilities have been significantly enhanced and include the following:
Safe-mode storage snapshots
Pure SafeMode protects data – ensuring ransomware cannot destroy, modify, or encrypt data – even in the case of the administrator credentials have been compromised.
For primary storage protection, Veeam Backup & Replication V12 can orchestrate the creation and replication of FlashArray storage snapshots across storage tiers with Pure Storage. Additionally, all those storage snapshots can be protected by Pure’s SafeMode. SafeMode provides immutability for storage snapshots created on Pure FlashArray.
For backup storage protection, Pure FlashArray can create SafeMode protected snapshots of the Veeam Backup Repository data residing on either FlashArray//C or FlashBlade//S NFS repositories.
This means that all critical data, whether primary or backup, is protected against malicious or accidental change or deletion by Pure’s SafeMode immutable storage snapshots.
Hardened Repository
The Veeam Hardened Repository is Veeam’s native solution to provide trusted immutability for backups of Veeam Backup & Replication on a Linux server. By making backups immutable for a configured amount of time, it protects the backups against ransomware, hackers, and other malicious and accidental threats.
Veeam’s Hardened Repository can be combined with Pure FlashArray//C SafeMode immutable snapshots for an additional layer of security protection.
S3 Object Lock
S3 Object Lock leverages a write-once-read-many (WORM) model for data storage. Object Lock prevents objects from being deleted or overwritten for a predefined amount of time or indefinitely.
Pure Storage supports S3 Object Lock with its FlashBlade S3-compatible storage.
Safemode Retention Lock
Pure Safemode Retention Lock provides an additional layer of protection on top of S3 Object Lock. With Safemode Retention Lock the backup storage is protected against insider or malicious threats where the administrator credentials have been compromised.
Why Choose Flash Storage for Backup: The Key to Fast Recovery
I am often asked “why use flash storage for backup?” The answer is recovery.
With ransomware criminals continuing to innovate and find more effective ways to attack organizations and their data, it is critical to not only have a pristine copy of the data, but also be able to recover potentially all the data with minimal disruption to the operations of the organization. With Pure Storage and Veeam Data Platform V12, organizations can have confidence that they will be able to recover all their data and do it fast.