How to seed your backups to Azure Storage

Your goal is to move your existing data to Azure leveraging Azure Data Box offline data transfer products to move large amounts of data.

NOTE: Please note that the process outlined below moves the data from your Veeam repository to the Azure Data Box. If you wish to retain your data during the seeding process you will need to have a second local copy available.

1. Perform the initial configuration to register Azure Data Box in your infrastructure by following the steps in this article.

2. Open the Veeam Backup & Replication Console and create an Object Storage Repository as described in the instructions from our User Guide here. Don't forget to select the same Region you specified in C:\Program Files\Veeam\Backup and Replication\Backup\AzureStorageRegions.xml during the initial configuration, as this Object Storage Repository will be pointing to your offline Azure Data Box.

3. At the Capacity Tier step of the Scale-out Backup Repository wizard (if you don't have Scale-out Backup Repository please create one), specify the Object Storage Repository created during the previous step and configure policies to trigger data transfer as described here.

4. Right click on your Scale-Out Backup Repository and select "Run Tiering Job Now" and await for the job to complete successfully. You can check the job status here.

5. Set the Object Storage Repository created in step #2 into maintenance mode by following these instructions.

6. Send your Azure Data Box back to Microsoft.

7. Await confirmation from Microsoft that the data has been successfully migrated in Azure.

8. Undo all the changes described in this article: remove DNS entries, remove certificate, rollback to the original C:\Program Files\Veeam\Backup and Replication\Backup\AzureStorageRegions.xml file, delete the ObjectStorageCRLCheckMode registry key and restart Veeam Backup Server.

9. Open Veeam Backup & Replication Console and create a new Object Storage Repository as described in these instructions using same Credentials but this time with proper Region selected. 

10. At the Capacity Tier step of the Scale-out Backup Repository wizard, select the Object Storage Repository created in the previous step; at the prompt, agree to change your capacity tier to use different object storage system.

11. Let Veeam check the Object Storage Repository for existing backups and update the backups in the Veeam Console.

12. You may now safely delete the Object Storage Repository created in step #1 as all of the data will be transfer now directly to Azure Storage.