In order to create a SoftNAS Cloud® SoftNAS® and Veeam Backup solution customized to your organization's individual needs, there is a fair bit of information you will need to gather, and a number of decisions that will need to be made. This primer is intended to help you identify the information needed to make informed decisions for your SoftNAS Cloud deployment with Veeam backups to the cloud. To guide you towards the solution that is right for you, the checklist below will help you record the key data required when you start your actual deployment of SoftNAS Cloud in AWS as a repository for Veeam backup data. 

This checklist can be copied and pasted into MS Word or the text editor of your choice in order to gather and record the information for easy reference when you start your SoftNAS Cloud deployment. Alternatively, this confluence page can be exported either as a word document or PDF, by selecting the menu icon in the top right corner. 

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For each section of the checklist, additional information is provided in a linked section below. These informative articles can be used to help you make deployment decisions or create prerequisite resources that will be needed for your deployment.

Deployment Checklist:

The following document serves as a checklist, and as such is designed so that our users can copy and paste to a separate document (or export), and mark up as necessary. We recommend that the checklist be used to record all data to be used in your deployment for easy reference during both planning and your actual deployment. 

1. Deployment: Determine your deployment type. SoftNAS supports two different deployment types. Select one of the below:
   
   
   •  Premise to AWS Cloud
   •  AWS Cloud to AWS Cloud
     
     
2. AWS Account: Record your AWS account credentials (how to create an AWS account listed below)
   
   
   • Account ID or Alias:_____________________
   • IAM User Name:_______________________
   • Password:____________________________
     
     
3. AWS Identity and Access Management: Ensure you have set up your AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) configuration to use with SoftNAS Cloud and record the IAM Role you will use below:
   
   
   • IAM Policy and Role created:____________________________
   • IAM Role Name:______________________________________
     
     
4. SoftNAS Cloud Offering: Determine what SoftNAS Cloud offering you use for your deployment. Select one of the below SoftNAS Cloud Offerings:
   
   
   •  SoftNAS Cloud® SoftNAS® Essentials 1TB
   •  SoftNAS Cloud® SoftNAS® Essentials 10TB
   •  SoftNAS Cloud® SoftNAS® Essentials 20TB
   •  SoftNAS Cloud® SoftNAS® Essentials 50TB
   •  SoftNAS Cloud® SoftNAS® Essentials 1TB+MMS Consumption
   •  SoftNAS Cloud® SoftNAS® Essentials BYOL
   •  Other non-Essentials:___________________________
   
   
5. Networking: Understand the premise data center firewall or other network changes required to access SoftNAS Cloud in AWS as your Veeam repository:
   
   
   • Data center networking and firewall changes requested and complete
     
     
     
6. AWS Instance Size: Select the AWS instance size for your deployment.
   Select one of the below:
   
   
   •  i3.xlarge
   •  i3.2xlarge
   •  i3.4xlarge
   •  i3.8xlarge
   •  Other:________________________
     
     
7. AWS Storage Selection: Select the type of AWS storage to use for your backup data in AWS.
   
   Select one of the below:
   •  AWS S3 Standard (Recommended for Veeam and SoftNAS Cloud Essentials)
   •  Other:________________________
     
     
8. Add a self-signed certification to your SoftNAS Cloud and Veeam deployment:
   
   
   •  Add the certification:
      
9. AWS VPC: Record the name of the VPC that you will use for your SoftNAS Cloud deployment
   
   
   •  VPC Name:____________________
   
   
   
10. Data Transfer Protocol and AWS Instance Security Group: You can select to use NFS or CIFs/SMB as the protocol to allow Veeam to transfer backup data to the SoftNAS Cloud repository.
    
    Select one of the below:
    •  NFS
    •  CIFs/SMB
    
    
    
11. AWS Key Pair: You may need your AWS Key Pair .pem file to launch SoftNAS in AWS and will need to know where to get it if needed.
    
    
    •  Key Pair .pem file location:_____________________
    
    
    
12. AWS Access Key: You will need your Access key ID and Secret access key the first time you allocate storage in SoftNAS Cloud StorageCenter admin console, record your Access key ID and Secret access key below (you should keep this information secure)
    
    
    • Access key ID:____________________________________
    • Secret access key:_________________________________
      
      
13. Deploy Your SoftNAS Cloud AWS instance via WAN:
    
    
14. Connect Veeam to SoftNAS in AWS via WAN:
    

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AWSVeeamDeployment AWSVeeamDeployment

Deployment

There are two supported deployments of Veeam and SoftNAS Cloud to back up your data to the cloud.

Supported: Veeam Backup of On Premise Data to SoftNAS in the Cloud

If the data you want to backup is located on premise and you want to leverage SoftNAS Cloud on AWS to store backup data on AWS cloud storage, the deployment below is recommended and supported. 

• Veeam and the data you want to backup will be located in you premise data center. 
• You will need a VPN or other secure network connection to AWS to secure the NFS or CIFs/SMB traffic to the cloud
• SoftNAS Cloud will be running in the AWS cloud and connected to AWS S3 storage for your backup files

Supported: Veeam Backup of Cloud Data to SoftNAS in the Cloud

If the data you want to backup is located in the AWS cloud and you want to leverage SoftNAS Cloud on AWS to store backup data on AWS cloud storage, the deployment below is recommended and supported. 

• Veeam and the data you want to backup will be located in the AWS cloud. 
• Veeam will use NFS or CIFs/SMB to transfer data from Veeam to SoftNAS Cloud over the AWS cloud network
• SoftNAS Cloud will be running in the AWS cloud and connected to AWS S3 storage for your backup files 

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If the data you want to backup is located in the AWS cloud and you want to leverage SoftNAS Cloud on AWS to store backup data on AWS cloud storage, the deployment below is recommended and supported.

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AWSVeeamAccount AWSVeeamAccount

AWS Account

If you plan on saving you backups to SoftNAS Cloud on AWS, you/your company will need an AWS account.   If you/your company does not have and AWS Account, you can create one here.

Once you have your AWS credentials (Account ID or alias, IAM username, Password), you will be able to log into the AWS Marketplace and select a SoftNAS Cloud Essentials offering here.

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AWSVeeamIAM AWSVeeamIAM

AWS Identity and Access Management

SoftNAS highly recommends the use of AWS Identity and Access Management with your SoftNAS instances.  To use IAM with SoftNAS instances you will need to create an IAM Policy and IAM Role before you launch your SoftNAS instance in AWS.  The process is simply and you can follow the instructions here to create the IAM Policy and Role to use with your SoftNAS Cloud deployment.

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AWSVeeamSoftNASCloudOffering AWSVeeamSoftNASCloudOffering

SoftNAS

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Offering

SoftNAS recommends use of SoftNAS Cloud Essentials and AWS S3 Object storage for use with Veeam for backups.   SoftNAS Cloud Essentials is our base offering which only supports Object storage.  Object storage is less expensive than Block storage and is a good option for use as storage for Veeam backups. 

SoftNAS offers 6 options for SoftNAS Cloud Essentials in the AWS Marketplace, depending on the capacity of storage you will need:

Fixed capacity AWS Marketplace offerings allow you to select a fixed storage capacity of 1TB, 10TB, 20TB or 50TB of total storage capacity for your SoftNAS Cloud Essentials deployment.  The selected capacity will be the maximum capacity you will have to save all of your Veeam backup files.

• SoftNAS Cloud® SoftNAS® Essentials 1TB:   Up to 1TB of storage for Veeam Backup files
• SoftNAS Cloud® SoftNAS® Essentials 10TB: Up to 10TB of storage for Veeam Backup files
• SoftNAS Cloud® SoftNAS® Essentials 20TB: Up to 20TB of storage for Veeam Backup files
• SoftNAS Cloud® SoftNAS® Essentials 50TB: Up to 50TB of storage for Veeam Backup files

Greater than 50TB fixed capacity can be obtained by using the BYOL (Bring Your Own License) option by contacting our SoftNAS Sales team.

• SoftNAS Cloud® SoftNAS® Essentials BYOL: If you require greater than 50TB of storage capacity for your Veeam backups, you can contact SoftNAS Sales for a BYOL license for the capacity of storage that meets your needs up to 16PB.

Consumption, pay for what you use, 1TB up to 16PB

• SoftNAS Cloud® SoftNAS® Essentials 1TB+MMS Consumption: SoftNAS also offers SoftNAS Cloud Essentials using the AWS MMS pricing option and can scale to a capacity of 16PB.

You can also use SoftNAS Cloud Enterprise or SoftNAS Cloud Platinum offerings for Veeam backups is you have a need for an enterprise storage solution beyond just the features/functionality offered in our SoftNAS Essentials offering. 

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AWSVeeamNetworking AWSVeeamNetworking

Networking

If you are deploying Veeam and SoftNAS Cloud to back up data from your premise data center to the cloud, you will likely need to make some network security changes to your data center’s network/firewall to allow Veeam running in the datacenter to be able to connect to the SoftNAS Cloud in AWS.    The information below is provided to help you make or request changes to your network team to ensure the network changes are ready when you are read to deploy SoftNAS.

NFS

If you will be using the NFS protocol to transmit data from Veeam on premise to SoftNAS Cloud in AWS, you will need to allow the following ports to traverse from your datacenter to the SoftNAS Cloud instance in AWS.  Firewall changes may be required. 

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CIFs/SMB

If you will be using CIFs/SMB to transmit data from Veeam on premise to SoftNAS Cloud in AWS, you will need to allow the following ports to traverse from your datacenter to the SoftNAS Cloud instance in AWS.  Firewall changes may be required.