Location Configuration

Veeam Kasten can usually invoke protection operations such as snapshots within a cluster without requiring additional credentials. While this might be sufficient if Veeam Kasten is running in some of (but not all) the major public clouds and if actions are limited to a single cluster, it is not sufficient for essential operations such as performing real backups, enabling cross-cluster and cross-cloud application migration, and enabling DR of the Veeam Kasten system itself.

To enable these actions that span the lifetime of any one cluster, Veeam Kasten needs to be configured with access to external object storage or external NFS file storage. This is accomplished via the creation of Location Profiles.

Location Profile creation can be accessed from the Location page of the Profiles menu in the navigation sidebar or via the CRD-based Profiles API.

Location Profiles

Location profiles are used to create backups from snapshots, move applications and their data across clusters and potentially across different clouds, and to subsequently import these backups or exports into another cluster. To create a location profile, click New Profile on the profiles page.

Object Storage Location

Support is available for the following object storage providers:

Amazon S3 or S3 Compatible Storage
Azure Storage
Google Cloud Storage

Veeam Kasten creates Kopia repositories in object store locations. Veeam Kasten uses Kopia as a data mover which implicitly provides support to deduplicate, encrypt and compress data at rest. Veeam Kasten performs periodic maintenance on these repositories to recover released storage.

Amazon S3 or S3 Compatible Storage

Enter the access key and secret, select the region and enter the bucket name. The bucket must be in the region specified. If the bucket has object locking enabled then set the Enable Immutable Backups toggle (see Immutable Backups for details). If the bucket is using S3 Intelligent-Tiering, only Standard-IA, One Zone-IA and Glacier Instant Retrieval storage classes are supported by Veeam Kasten.

An IAM role may be specified for an Amazon S3 location profile by selecting the Execute Operations Using an AWS IAM Role button.

If an S3-compatible object storage system is used that is not hosted by one of the supported cloud providers, an S3 endpoint URL will need to be specified and optionally, SSL verification might need to be disabled. Disabling SSL verification is only recommended for test setups.

When a location profile is created, the config profile will be created, and a profile similar to the following will appear:

The minimum supported version for NetApp ONTAP S3 is 9.12.1.

Azure Storage

To use an Azure storage location, you are required to pick an Azure Storage Account, a Cloud Enviornment and a Container.

The Container must be created beforehand.

Google Cloud Storage

In addition to authenticating with Google Service Account credentials, Veeam Kasten also supports authentication with Google Workload Identity Federation with Kubernetes as the Identity Provider.

In order to use Google Workload Identity Federation, some additional Helm settings are necessary. Please refer to Installing Veeam Kasten with Google Workload Identity Federation for details on how to install Veeam Kasten with these settings.

Enter the project identifier and the appropriate credentials, i.e., the service key for the Google Service Account or the credential configuration file for Google Workload Identity Federation. Credentials should be in JSON or PKCS12 format. Then, select the region and enter a bucket name. The bucket must be in the specified location.

Note

When using Google Workload Identity Federation with Kubernetes as the Identity Provider, ensure that the credential configuration file is configured with the format type (--credential-source-type) set to Text, and specify the OIDC ID token path (--credential-source-file) as /var/run/secrets/kasten.io/serviceaccount/GWIF/token.

NFS File Storage Location

Requirements:

An NFS server reachable from the nodes where Veeam Kasten is installed
An exported NFS share, mountable on all the nodes where Veeam Kasten is installed

A Persistent Volume defining the exported NFS share similar to the example below:

apiVersion: v1
kind: PersistentVolume
metadata:
   name: test-pv
spec:
   capacity:
      storage: 10Gi
   volumeMode: Filesystem
   accessModes:
      - ReadWriteMany
   persistentVolumeReclaimPolicy: Retain
   storageClassName: nfs
   mountOptions:
      - hard
      - nfsvers=4.1
   nfs:
      path: /
      server: 172.17.0.2

A corresponding Persistent Volume Claim with the same storage class name in the Veeam Kasten namespace (default kasten-io):

apiVersion: v1
kind: PersistentVolumeClaim
metadata:
   name: test-pvc
   namespace: kasten-io
spec:
   storageClassName: nfs
   accessModes:
      - ReadWriteMany
   resources:
      requests:
         storage: 10Gi

Once the above requirements are met, an NFS FileStore location profile can be created on the profiles page using the PVC created above.

By default, Veeam Kasten will use the root user to access the NFS Filestore location profile. To use a different user, the Supplemental Group and Path fields can be set. The Path field must refer to the directory located within the PVC specified in the Claim Name. The group specified in the Supplemental Group field must have read, write, and execute access to this directory.

Veeam Repository Location

A Veeam Repository can be used for exported vSphere CSI provisioned volume snapshot data when using a supported vSphere cluster. To create such a location profile, click New Profile on the profiles page and choose the Veeam provider type in the dialog which results in a form similar to the following:

Provide the DNS name or the IP address of the Veeam backup server in the Veeam Backup Server field. The Veeam Backup Server API Port field is pre-configured with the installation default value and may be changed if necessary. Specify the name of a backup repository on this server in the Backup Repository field.

If you have an immutable Veeam Repository, follow the instructions to set it up in Veeam Kasten.

Warning

Please be aware that using more than one unique VBR host in location profiles is not supported and may cause synchronization issues between Veeam Kasten and VBR. You can create as many location profiles as you need, but they should use the same server. If you try to save a host which is not used in other profiles you will get a warning, it's possible to proceed, but you should use this option only for temporary product reconfiguration cases.

Provide access credentials in the Username and Password fields.

Note

Make sure that Access Permissions are granted for this account or its group on Veeam backup repositories where you want to keep backups exported by Veeam Kasten policies. Check Veeam User Guide for the details.

Upon clicking Submit, the dialog will validate the input data. Communication with the server uses SSL and requires that the server's certificate be trusted by Veeam Kasten. If such trust is not established but you trust your environment, you may check the Skip certificate chain and hostname verification option to disable certificate validation.

Location Settings for Migration

If the location profile is used for exporting an application for cross-cluster migration, it will be used to store application restore point metadata and, when moving across infrastructure providers, bulk data too. Similarly, location profiles are also used for importing applications into a cluster that is different than the source cluster where the application was captured.

Note

In case of NFS File Storage Location, the exported NFS share must be reachable from the destination cluster and mounted on all the nodes where Veeam Kasten is installed.

Read-Only Location Profile

Veeam Kasten supports read-only location profiles for import and restore operations. These profiles require no write permissions, as the system performs only read operations during these phases.

Note

Read-only profiles can only be used for import and restore operations. Attempting to use them for backup or export operations will result in an error.

This configuration is particularly useful when:

Working with immutable backups
Implementing strict security policies
Accessing shared backup repositories

Immutable Backups

The frequency of ransomware attacks on enterprise customers is increasing. Backups are essential for recovering from these attacks, acting as a first line of defense for recovering critical data. Attackers are now targeting backups as well, to make more difficult, if not impossible for their victims to recover.

Veeam Kasten can leverage object-locking and immutability features available in many object store providers to ensure its exported backups are protected from tampering. When exporting to a locked bucket, the restore point data cannot be deleted or modified within a set period, even with administrator privileges. If an attacker obtains privileged object store credentials and attempts to disrupt the backups stored there, Veeam Kasten can restore the protected application by reading back the original, immutable and unadulterated restore point.

Immutable backups are supported for AWS S3 and other S3 compatible object stores. Additionally, they are supported for Azure and Google.

More information on the full Immutable Backups Workflow.

Warning

The generic storage and shareable volume backup and restore workflows are not compatible with the protections afforded by immutable backups. Use of a location profile enabled for immutable backups can be used for backup and restore, but the protection period is ignored, and the profile is treated as a non-immutability-enabled location. Please note that using an object-locking bucket for such use cases can amplify storage usage without any additional benefit. Please contact support for any inquiries.

S3 Locked Bucket Setup

To prepare Veeam Kasten to export immutable backups, a bucket must be prepared in advance.

The bucket must be created on AWS S3 or an S3 compatible object store.
The bucket must be created with object locking enabled. Note: On some S3-compatible implementations, the object locking property of a bucket can only be enabled/configured at bucket creation time.

A sample Minio CLI mc script that will set up an immutable-backup-eligible locked bucket in AWS S3:

# Set up the following variables:
BUCKET_NAME=<choose a unique bucket name>
REGION=<pick the region for the bucket>
AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=<access key ID>
AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=<secret access key>

# Alias the s3 account credentials
mc alias set s3 https://s3.amazonaws.com ${AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID} ${AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY}

# Make the bucket with locking enabled
mc mb --region=${REGION} s3/${BUCKET_NAME} --with-lock

For more information on setting up object-locking: * Using S3 Object Lock

Profile Creation

Once a bucket has been prepared with each of these requirements met, a profile can be created from the Veeam Kasten dashboard to point to it.

Follow the steps for setting up a profile as normal. Enter a profile name, object store credentials, region, and bucket name.

It is recommended that the credentials provided to access the locked bucket are granted minimal permissions only:

List objects
List object versions
Determine if bucket exists
Get object lock configuration
Get bucket versioning state
Get/Put object retention
Get/Put/Remove object
Get object metadata

See Using Veeam Kasten with AWS S3 for a list of required permissions.

After selecting the checkbox labeled "Enable Immutable Backups" a new button labeled "Validate Bucket <bucket-name>" will appear. Click the Validate Bucket button to initiate a series of checks against the bucket, verifying the bucket can be reached and meets all of the requirements denoted above. All conditions must be met for the check to succeed and for the profile form to be submitted.

If the provided bucket meets all of the conditions, a Protection Period slider will appear. The protection period is a user-selectable time period that Veeam Kasten will use when maintaining an ongoing immutable retention period for each exported restore point. A longer protection period means a longer window in which to detect, and safely recover from, an attack; backup data remains immutable and unadulterated for longer. The trade-off is increased storage costs, as potentially stale data cannot be removed until the object's immutable retention expires.

Veeam Kasten limits the maximum protection period that can be selected to 90 days. A safety buffer is added to the desired protection period. This is to ensure Veeam Kasten can always find and maintain ongoing protection of any new objects written to the bucket before their retention lapses. The minimum protection period is 1 day.

Click the "Submit" button. The profile will be submitted to Veeam Kasten and appear in the Location Profiles list. The dedicated view page will reflect the object immutability status of the referenced bucket, as well as the selected protection period.

Protecting applications with Immutable Backups

Selecting the locked bucket profile as the Export Location Profile in the Backups procedure will render all application data immutable for the duration of the protection period. Additionally, to ensure Veeam Kasten can restore that application data, Veeam Kasten should also be protected with an immutable locked-bucket Disaster Recovery (DR) profile.

In a situation where the cluster and/or object store has been corrupted, attacked, or otherwise tampered with, Veeam Kasten might be just as susceptible to being compromised as any other application. Protecting both (apps and Veeam Kasten) with immutable locked-bucket profiles will ensure the data is intact, and that Veeam Kasten knows how to restore it. Therefore, if one or more locked bucket location profiles are being used to back up and protect vital applications, it is highly recommended that a locked bucket profile should also be used with Veeam Kasten DR.

When setting up a location profile for Veeam Kasten DR, one should choose a protection period that is AT LEAST as long as the longest protection period in use for application backups. For example if one application is being backed up using a profile with a 1 week protection period, and another using a 1 year protection period, the protection period for the Veeam Kasten DR backup profile should be at least 1 year to ensure the latter application can always be recovered by Veeam Kasten in the required 1-year time window.

See Restoring Veeam Kasten Backup for instructions on how to restore Veeam Kasten to a point-in-time.

Azure Immutability Setup

To set up immutability in Azure take into account the following requirements:

Ensure that the container exists and is reachable with the credentials provided in the profile form.
Enable versioning on the related storage account.
Ensure support for version-level immutability on the container or related storage account.

Since Veeam Kasten ignores retention policies, it is not necessary to set one on the container. As an alternative, choose the desired protection period, and the files will be initially protected for that amount plus a safety buffer to ensure protection compliance.

Google Immutability Setup

To set up immutability in Google take into account the following requirements:

Ensure that the bucket exists and is reachable with the credentials provided in the profile form.
Enable object versioning on the bucket.
Enable object retention lock on the bucket.
If using minimal permissions with the credentials, storage.objects.setRetention permission is also required.`