Veeam Getting Started Guide with SoftNAS® Essentials: AWS

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Last updated: May 19, 2020

As organizations struggle with managing the vast amounts of data they produce, cloud backups are becoming one of the fastest growing technologies adopted. SoftNAS has long provided flexible, cloud-native, 100% software-defined cloud data platform for enterprise control of any data, any cloud, anywhere. With Veeam's acknowledged expertise, SoftNAS is now able to offer a clear solution to our customer's considerable cloud backup needs. 

When using SoftNAS for backup or archive use cases such as Veeam backups to cloud storage, cloud storage cost is a key factor. For this reason, we will be concentrating on our low-cost, high performance object storage solution, SoftNAS® Essentials. Any of SoftNAS®'s editions can be used for archive and backup purposes, but with SoftNAS® Essential's focus on low-cost secondary tier storage, and improved object-storage performance, it presents an ideal balance for most customer backup and archive needs.

Solution Components:

This solution contains the following components:

  • Existing on premise data center or co-location
  • Existing Veeam Backup solution
  • Network connection – AWS Direct Connect
  • AWS Virtual Machine (M4.2Xlarge or better)
  • AWS S3 Storage
  • SoftNAS  ® Essentials



AWS Direct Connect

A direct, high speed network connection between your host system and the cloud is recommended for best results. Data must be transferred quickly and reliably whenever needed/scheduled.

Virtual Machine

A virtual machine with a 10 GBe network is required to host SoftNAS® Essentials. On AWS, the instance size should be M4.2xlarge or better, in order to provide adequate performance.

AWS S3 Storage

AWS S3 storage is the best selection for this architecture because of its low cost and the expectation that most of the data will be written and never read.  If data is truly archive in nature, then this storage option provides the best value to hold these files.

SoftNAS® Essentials

SoftNAS® Essentials is a software defined storage appliance providing the file path for Veeam archive storage to Object Storage in the Cloud.  Without this storage appliance the translation and data packaging would not occur and this solution would not function.  SoftNAS provides the critical connectivity and integration between Veeam and the Cloud Platform of your choice.

Benefits of ObjFast™ Technology

Without ObjFast™

Unless optimized, backup operations can overload the backend cloud object system, resulting in 500 errors. These errors in turn require processing power to handle, which can cause a synthetic Full Backup to take up to 11 times longer than an on-premise backup. This has long been a factor in reducing cloud adoption for backup solutions.

With ObjFast™

With SoftNAS' ObjFast™ optimization in place, data flow is controlled, maintaining an optimal transfer rate, preventing 500 errors from derailing your backup process. With SoftNAS, Synthetic Full Backups only take 1.5 times longer than on premises solutions, removing one barrier to enjoying the cost benefits of cloud adoption.

Getting Started (SoftNAS recommends the below steps are followed in sequence)