TechTarget Reviews Object First for Future-Ready Mid-Enterprise Ransomware Resiliency and Disaster Recovery

Object First Backup for Veeam

Technical Review by Enterprise Strategy Group by TechTarget

Abstract

This Technical Review by TechTarget’s Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) documents the detailed evaluation of the Object First backup solution for Veeam, including the setup process, scalability, and performance.

The Challenges

Ransomware attacks make the news on a regular basis, so it should come as no surprise that respondents confirm the regular frequency with which they occur. Figure 1 shows that 79% of respondent organizations to an Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) research survey reported having experienced a ransomware attack within the last year, and among that population, nearly three-quarters reported that they have been financially or operationally impacted by these attacks. It should also be noted that 1 in 3 organizations reported having been successfully hit more than once, making ransomware both a significant and recurring source of business disruption.

Figure 1.
79% of Organizations Reported Having Experienced a Ransomware Attack within the Last Year

Source: Enterprise Strategy Group, a division of TechTarget, Inc.

The Solution: Object First

The Object First S3-compatible backup storage appliance is specifically designed for Veeam customers and provides an immutable primary object storage target for on-premises Veeam backups by leveraging the Veeam Backup & Replication v12 Smart Object Protocol API. Object First provides the following key capabilities:

• Built-in out-of-the-box immutability that reduces the risk of ransomware by encrypting backup data without the need for any in-house expertise or manual work.
• A simple-to-deploy solution that can be racked, stacked, installed, and configured in 15 minutes.
• The ability for users to scale performance and capacity by simply adding a node.
• A factory-hardened Linux operating system that protects data integrity.
• Fast backup performance, recovery speed, and Instant Recovery with the ability to run failed workloads directly from backups within minutes.
• An easy-to-use and cost-effective Veeam backup solution, which is explicitly built for backup and provides fast backup performance without the complexity of large enterprise solutions.

Object First provides an optimized backup storage solution by implementing a specifically tailored solution for data protection with ransomware resiliency, hardened security, and high performance.

Figure 2.
Object First Solution Overview

Source: Enterprise Strategy Group, a division of TechTarget, Inc.

Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) Tested

ESG performed a technical review of the Object First backup solution for Veeam, including the setup process, scalability, and performance.

Setup Process

Object storage is the primary storage used in cloud architectures that enables true immutability and uses buckets but doesn’t have a hierarchy like file systems or block storage. Veeam can use object storage as a primary backup destination by leveraging the new Veeam Backup & Replication v12 Smart Object Protocol API.
The demo showed how simple it is to set up the backup solution. After the user has racked and stacked the box and configured the hardware, then the user can complete the following steps (see Figure 3):

• Set up a new cluster.
• Configure the network interface by specifying the network NIC settings, which are automatically populated according to the existing cluster configuration.
• Specify the cluster name, cluster management IP address, and cluster S3 endpoint IP address.
• Create the password for the cluster administrator.

The cluster configuration is now complete.

Figure 3.
Simple Setup Steps

Source: Enterprise Strategy Group, a division of TechTarget, Inc.

Next, the user will see the Object First Dashboard (see Figure 4).

Figure 4.
Object First Dashboard

Source: Enterprise Strategy Group, a division of TechTarget, Inc.

The Object First Dashboard shows the following information:

• Capacity: storage used, backup data, generic data, and free storage.
• Alerts: cluster health, update availability, warnings, and events.
• Cluster state: number of nodes, disks, networks, and S3 buckets.
• Cluster-wide performance: network throughput, S3 operations, and performance.

At this point, the user would create an S3 bucket, add a backup repository to Veeam Backup & Replication, and then select the Object First repository for backup and/or copy jobs.
Users can now schedule backup or copy jobs as needed.

Scalability and Performance

Performance, capacity, and network bandwidth scale linearly with each node, with no additional management overhead and no changes on the Veeam Backup & Replication side, without having to re-configure the jobs (see Table 1).

Table 1.
Scalability and Performance (Version 1 Supports Up to 4 Nodes)

Source: Enterprise Strategy Group, a division of TechTarget, Inc.

Additionally, the solution automatically load balances the objects themselves so users do not have to shift backup jobs to optimize storage or performance. In other words, Object First has already optimized the solution so that users do not need to tweak the system to increase performance.

Immutability

Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) was also able to confirm the out-of-the-box immutability, which eliminated the risk of ransomware infiltrating backup data. In addition, the factory-hardened operating system helps assure data integrity.

Why This Matters

Why This Matters As mentioned earlier in the paper, ransomware attacks are not going away. Most organizations reported having experienced a ransomware attack within the last year, and very few (14%) reported getting all their data back after paying a ransom. Over half of victims of successful ransomware attacks reported that their affected data included sensitive infrastructure configuration data.

Object First created an object storage solution designed specifically for the backup use case and specifically for Veeam. The solution is aimed at midsize enterprises with constrained IT. The physical appliance provides the defense against ransomware with immutability right out of the box. In addition, Object First delivers a simple, powerful, and affordable solution that can easily scale up to 0.5 petabytes (PB).

Author: Craig Ledo, IT Validation Analyst