[ARCHIVED] Veeam Backup & Removable Media (rotated drives)

[veremin]

What sort of preparation is needed on the external hard drive?

Probably, the best option will be to run custom scripts in order to clean the given drive in automatic fashion. You can either use the scripts that have been already proposed or write your own ones. Thanks.

[Erik]

Eremin - The drives have different volume names, but everything else looks the same inside the folder structure, or the backs fail. I follow your logic and like the idea of creating a script to identify the location of the file(s). Thanks!

[veremin]

Yes, you can use whatever distinguishing factor you want to in order to identify the drive that should be cleaned. It can volume name, drive model, drive ID, etc. I mentioned the script there to give some general idea on how the process can be scripted.

Thanks.

[loda117]

Hi Guys,
I have asked this question a long time ago and got my answer but I am also looking at it since we have upgraded our clients to 7.0 and how this will affect the jobs.
Little background
We have 5 Network Attach Storage Drives WD
We have configured them all with same IP Address 192.168.1.225 and they all have one shared folder called "VeeamBackup"
Client rotates the drives everyday
I have one backup repository which is pointed to \\192.168.1.225\Veeambackup
I have 2 Jobs that are going to that repository "SBS" and "OtherServers"
Now both of my jobs are configured as Reversed Incremental
I have active Full checked marked
Weekly on Selected Days "monday, tues,wed,thursday,friday"

I have a script running which deletes older VBK files which are over 3 weeks and runs that script before backups are about to go off

Is this the right way of doing this? since these drives get rotated so incremental would not work or 7.0 has changed that.
I have tried reading up about it but couldn't find anything..

thanks.

[foggy]

Ali, Veeam B&R v7 with patch 3 installed can handle drive cleanup before writing to it automatically. Please review this thread for the steps required to configure that behavior (basically, through a couple of registry keys). Thanks.

[MarkB]

Hi
I am brand new to Veeam, using version 7

I have a situation where i am backing up 20 Vsphere vm's to a NAS unit that via scripting changes disks daily at midnight, 7 - 4TB disks

It seems the first backup works just fine but the following days fail with this error:

Error: Client error: File does not exist. Failed to restore file from local backup. VFS link: [summary.xml]. Target file: [MemFs://Tar2Text]. CHMOD mask: [0].

These are setup as Reverse incremental with Active full backups set to daily with all weekdays set

Am I doing things incorrectly? I can give more detail as needed

Thanks
Mark

[foggy]

Mark, please review the end of this thread for instructions on implementing the rotated drives scenario. Feel free to ask, if something is still not clear after reviewing it.

[malibubts]

This might not be the correct place for this, but how is everyone passing the RDX device to a VM? Ideally I would like to have my server running Veeam virtualized in ESXi and then use a Dell RD1000 on my PowerEdge 2950 with the on board SATA. I have seen others using a raw device mapping to pass SATA storage but does this work with removable media? Or is there a better way to do this / it can't be done?

[foggy]

Eric, you could also present it as a network share or mount to any Windows or Linux box and create a repository there.

[InterTech]

We have B&Rv7/SP3 with registry changes applied and rebooted. We had been backing up nightly to repositories on internal hard drives using reverse incremental (one job per VM), then copying repositories to removable drive with daily rotation. With the new rotation feature, we are now trying to back up directly to the removable drives. After designating the removable drive as a repository and redirecting the backup jobs to it, we were surprised that the backup jobs erased the week-old .vbk and associated .vrb files and did a full backup (new .vbk only). We expected an incremental backup (modified .vbk, new .vrb). Full backups take much too long, spilling over into the work day, disrupting users when VMs get stunned, so we need to be doing incremental backups to our daily-rotated removable drives. How can we accomplish this without the backup-then-copy two-step?

[foggy]

Ronald, this can be accomplished with several separate jobs, one per each drive in rotation (no need in registry modifications in this case). Just be sure to schedule them carefully so that they run on the days the correct drive is connected. Thanks.

[veremin]

In addition, if these disks have any distinguishing criteria (they are added under different names, they have different IDs, etc.), you can write simple PS script that will check what disk is inserted and execute the appropriate backup job accordignly. Thanks.

[EddyChong]

Ronald, this can be accomplished with several separate jobs, one per each drive in rotation (no need in registry modifications in this case). Just be sure to schedule them carefully so that they run on the days the correct drive is connected. Thanks.

HI Alexander,

We are facing the same challenge as well. Customer is doing Backup-Copy_to_ExternalHDD 2-steps to achieve offsite backup. Can you explain more about creating multiple jobs to get this done? (Not creating full backup everyday on each rotated external hdd)

Is it for example create a weekly full backup job running on Monday only. Then from Tuesday to Sunday create another 6 jobs separately? How to get incremental backup only during Tuesday-Sunday if in this case?

Thank you

[foggy]

Eddy, with this setup you will have totally separate backup chains on each of the drives (created by the corresponding job). Each drive will contain a full backup created on the first day it is inserted (e.g. Monday) and subsequent increments triggered on subsequent Mondays. Each job should be scheduled to run weekly, on its corresponding day only.

[EddyChong]

Hi Alexander,

In this case they way we keep the backup will be based on which day of the week. Is this scenario the one you suggested to Ronald in previous reply?

Thank you

[foggy]

Yep, this is the same scenario.

[EddyChong]

I see. Thanks.

[veremin]

Also, search this thread and you will see some examples of how you can automate the whole process; meaning you can create a script that will check which drive is inserted and execute an appropriate job in accordance. Thanks.

[Gostev]

Just to update this thread, v8 will have rotated drives option available directly in the user interface (as the advanced Backup Repository setting) - and if all goes well, we will include a couple of very neat finishing touches around this functionality, further improving the current logic. Keep an eye on the corresponding What's New section

[nicolasL]

Hi all !

I'm using Veeam Backup 7 to backup 2 ESX servers, and I'm facing a challenge about a backup policy.
We want to backup everything using external backup disks we change every day.

I noticed that if we change the disk, the next day, Veeam fails due to missing files from the previous day.
So I decided to use an internal disk for everyday backup, and at the end of the backup, I launch a script which robocopies the files from this internal drive to an external drive which is changed every day. Retention policy is 1 week. 1 Full backup every week-end, and incremental each day.

It used to work well, but now, my backup size is over 1TB. My internal drive for local backups is 2TB.
So on the second week, when it tries to create the second full on disk, I don't have enough space so it fails.

The thing is : I already have the previous full backup and incremental on several disks (my daily disks), so I wonder if it's possible to delete all the files on my local drive (through Veeam to make veeam knows it's deleted) and at the same time, in case of a crash, be able to restore files from my backups on the external drive (like a way to import theses backups...). I tried to import backup (trough Backup -> Disk -> Import Backup) but it fails.

Any ideas how to make this work ? Should I do it another way ?

Thanks a lot
Nicolas

[Shestakov]

Hi Nicolas,

I noticed that if we change the disk, the next day, Veeam fails due to missing files from the previous day.
So I decided to use an internal disk for everyday backup, and at the end of the backup, I launch a script which robocopies the files from this internal drive to an external drive which is changed every day. Retention policy is 1 week. 1 Full backup every week-end, and incremental each day.

To continue backup job after previous backup is moved and existing backup files were deleted manually (not using retention policy settings), please install Veeam B&R v7 patch #3 and implement the rotated drives scenario described in the "Rotated Media" section of the patch release notes. You can also install #4, since patches are accumulative. Basically, you need to set the ForceCreateMissingVBK (DWORD) registry key on your backup server to get this work.

I wonder if it's possible to delete all the files on my local drive (through Veeam to make veeam knows it's deleted) and at the same time, in case of a crash, be able to restore files from my backups on the external drive (like a way to import theses backups...). I tried to import backup (trough Backup -> Disk -> Import Backup) but it fails.

To be able to import backup files, you need the entire backup chain including corresponding VBK file.

You can use proper retention policy for not storing more backups than your local repository can handle. Also to store backups on your disks it`s better to use backup copy job instead of scripting.

To sum everything up, you need to update to a newest patch and then decide either to backup to rotated media or to a local repository + rotated media using backup copy job. The last one is more preferable.

Also as you might noticed, your post has been merged to an existing topic. Please read related posts.
Thank you.

[Gostev]

As of B&R 8.0, rotated drives functionality can now be enabled with a check box in the advanced backup repository settings, as opposed to being controlled by ForceCreateMissingVBK registry settings (which, however, is still supported for upgrade compatibility reasons).

ForceDeleteBackupFiles reg key also works as before, not to change the product behavior after v8 upgrade. However, we strongly recommend deleting this key, because backup files clean up is now integrated, and is done automatically for all Veeam backup files which are no longer under retention policy (see v8 What's New document).

Additionally, v8 backup jobs now track known external hard drives, and "follow" them transparently in case drive letter changes, instead of failing. Even more reasons to upgrade to v8!

Meanwhile, I will be locking and archiving this thread for people still using older versions.

Rotated hard drives support in v8