On-Prem Object Storage + Veeam Backup & Replication’s Instant VM Recovery = Rapid Recovery

When we introduced the Capacity Tier in Veeam Backup & Replication (VBR) v9.5.4 early in 2019, there were few, if any, on-prem object storage platforms that would be recommended as a source for Instant VM Recovery (IVMR).  At that time on-prem object storage was not considered performative enough to sustain the speeds required to restore a single VM instantly, never mind multiple simultaneous restorations.

But things have changed since those “early days”.  Now doing IVMR from on-prem object storage is commonplace.  Recently I worked with one of our Technical Alliance Partners (TAP), Spectra Logic, testing with their BlackPearl S3 Hybrid Cloud Object Storage.  One of the VBR features tested was IVMR and the results validated the performance that on-prem object storage can achieve.  Here are the details and results of this particular test:

IVMR Test Scenario:

The Instant VM Recovery test scenario was designed to highlight BlackPearl’s performance capabilities when recovering instantly multiple VMs simultaneously.  This was done by executing the following steps:

1. A backup of 100 ESXi virtual machines was performed using VBR v12.1
2. Each VM contained 100GB of data that had a 5:1 compression rate
3. The VBR backup repository was backed by BlackPearl S3 storage 

IVMR Test Environment:

The Instant VM Recovery test environment consisted of the following:

1. a single VBR server running VBR 12.1
2. ESXi cluster with 3 hosts
3. ESXi DataStore comprised of Nimble Storage Array C3000
4. BlackPearl S3 Hybrid Cloud Object Storage
5. 100Gbps Switch

IVMR Test Results:

The Instant VM Recovery test results using BlackPearl S3 Hybrid Cloud Object Storage as a VBR repository were impressive.  A single 100GB VM was able to be instantly restored in approximately 38 seconds.  This proved that in the event that a virtual machine needs to be restored as soon as possible, on-prem object storage can be a valid option.

Another restore scenario was to restore all 100 VMs instantly and simultaneously.  This test took approximately 22 minutes to complete with a sustained IVMR rate of over 2GB/sec, proving that on-prem object storage can instantly restore many VMs at the same time.

Conclusion:

BlackPearl S3 Hybrid Cloud Object Storage performed amazingly well.  It is a very easy platform to work with and extremely reliable.  I’ve used it for many tests including those for a previous blog Veeam Backup & Replication v12.1 + Spectra BlackPearl = On-Prem Archive Tier.  By using BlackPearl S3 we were able to show that on-prem object storage can be used to simultaneously restore many VM instantly using Veeam Backup & Replication’s IVMR feature. 

So if you are considering using on-prem object storage in your VBR environment, please test your chosen on-prem solution using IVMR with the knowledge that it should be able to complete your restorations in a timely manner.