Multi-level Incremental Azure Backups?

Post Reply
itsmwar
New here
Posts: 5
Joined: Tue Nov 04, 2014 10:51 pm

Multi-level Incremental Azure Backups?

Post by itsmwar »

I've got a TS-469L NAS that's talking to Azure and incrementally backing up every night without issue. However, I'd like to enable multi-level incremental backups - so if a file is edited on a Tuesday, saved, and then on Thursday we discover that the edit was bad and we need the original copy of the file back, we can go back to Monday night's backup to pull the file back out. Is this possible? If not, is my only solution to set up a different job for every day of the week? It seems like that would give me a week of backups to choose from, but at the cost of taking up 7x as much cloud storage. Basically, I'm trying to guard against something like CryptoLocker coming in, encrypting our files, and then having our good backup overwritten with encrypted files and having no way to get the good files back.
paulchu

Re: Multi-level Incremental Azure Backups?

Post by paulchu »

Hi, the current design always keep the latest version of your data in the cloud. The feature you need seems to be keeping multiple versions in the cloud. Using multiple backup jobs is a feasible solution for now. We will include your input when planning for the next major release.
itsmwar
New here
Posts: 5
Joined: Tue Nov 04, 2014 10:51 pm

Re: Multi-level Incremental Azure Backups?

Post by itsmwar »

Paul, that is excellent news - I think that a multilevel incremental backup would be a fantastic feature for a future release. As for now, we'll make do with multiple backup jobs. Thanks!
User avatar
barrie.elliott
Starting out
Posts: 48
Joined: Wed Nov 07, 2012 7:31 pm

Re: Multi-level Incremental Azure Backups?

Post by barrie.elliott »

Just to comment on this post, its now a while down the line and the multi level redundancy option is still not available.
It would be good to have the option available when creating the backup job to Azure, to choose how many versions of the same file is kept or adopt the GFS (Grandfather, Father, Son) principle.
Any ideas on when and if this feature will be available for Azure Backup?
Regards
Barrie Elliott

IT Solutions Specialist
mleupen
First post
Posts: 1
Joined: Sun Jun 26, 2011 3:32 am

Re: Multi-level Incremental Azure Backups?

Post by mleupen »

I am also wondering if there is an ETA for multilevel redundancy. Is there a chance we will see a new version that includes this option soon?

Cheers, Mark
GrantP
New here
Posts: 8
Joined: Mon Mar 21, 2016 6:43 am

Re: Multi-level Incremental Azure Backups?

Post by GrantP »

I'd like to add my voice for this functionality too.

Actually, having the Azure app do blob snapshots is probably the best way of doing it. According to the Azure team, snapshots can only be managed through code, so that means the app will have to manage them. Thoughts?
norbert colon
First post
Posts: 1
Joined: Sat Dec 27, 2014 9:10 pm

Re: Multi-level Incremental Azure Backups?

Post by norbert colon »

Desperate for this functionality .... any news?
User avatar
barrie.elliott
Starting out
Posts: 48
Joined: Wed Nov 07, 2012 7:31 pm

Re: Multi-level Incremental Azure Backups?

Post by barrie.elliott »

Just adding to this, the option is still not available in the latest builds. Sigh........ and don't think it will be sadly.
I also hate to be the barer of bad news, but Synology have already done this.

Due to the Azure storage limitations on multi-versioning, QNAP do flat file backup to the Storage Blog, so you can log in via the Azure Storage Explorer and recover files directly from the cloud. yay great..... but no multiple versions unless you have multiple containers for different backup jobs.....

Synology however have created their own file system / datbase for storing this data in Azure, so you have a database which keeps track of the location of the files, thus making Synology have the ability to recover from previous backups, giving the ability of file versioning.

QNAP would have to design a Database / File System to keep track of changed files when using Azure Storage accounts, so this means you don't have the simple task of flat file data in one blob.

QNAP would have to redesign the Azure Storage App and the way it backs up data.

That probably why no one from QNAP has responded with an ETA on this in 3 years.....
Regards
Barrie Elliott

IT Solutions Specialist
gunnerman
New here
Posts: 3
Joined: Tue Oct 22, 2019 1:23 am

Re: Multi-level Incremental Azure Backups?

Post by gunnerman »

Azure has blob versioning available in preview.

Figured I would share since I came here looking for a similar solution. It's kind of funny, Qnap creates the VJBOD Cloud service with the main selling point being backup. If your NAS conks out you can restore from the cloud location as if it were a snapshot restore. OK, that is kind of nifty, however, it is kind of half baked and I would never use it as my sole backup solution.

Sure, it protects against hardware failure but what if your VJBODC volume gets cryptolocked? First thing NAS is going to do is update all of your backed up cloud files and you are hosed. Oh, and you can't take a snapshot of a VJBODC volume so you don't even get local versioning. The only way this works is if you then connect another service to your cloud storage to take real backups of it.

They claim RTO reduction. Let's say your NAS's power supply craps out and you don't have a spare psu or qnap nas. Your potential RTO just got a lot longer because the files stored in cloud are only readable by QNAP systems. You can't quick copy them down to a spare server and get back to work while you wait for your new psu to arrive.

Thus, I find little reason to use VJBODC except for maybe scenarios where you want to use it to replicate data while you do a RAID migration or something and don't have the local storage.

Instead, I use HBS, and save to a cloud location with versioning enabled. Then I retain all of the features on the volume that are actually useful, like snapshots, app access, etc.

Another option is to use HybridMount and link it to a cloud service that handles versioning well. DropBox for example. The drawback here again is no QNAP app access.

It really is too bad. You know how cool it would be to be able to replicate local snapshots to a cloud location using VJBODC or HybridMount? Take snapshots of a VJBODC volume for local Windows previous versions or replication? Or the ability to create numbered full backups? Keep n backup versions local and move older ones to cloud archive storage? Compress backup files using a non-proprietary protocol? QNAP has all of these systems that sound really cool but in the end they turn out to be kind of useless for most situations.
Post Reply

Return to “Microsoft Azure”