Veeam Backup & Removable Media (rotated drives)

[nickmancini]

Question:

With Veeam 4, if the backup job has the "Perform Full Backup on these days" option checked for every day, and, if the job has a retention policy of only 1 rollback point, can the job be written to a removable media set (RDX drive) that is rotated daily?

While we understand (and like) the idea of always writing the backup job to local media, and then using robocopy or xcopy to copy the jobs to removable media, this is not always practical, due to HDD size contraints, as well as other issues.

Please advise.

Thx.

[Gostev]

Not in Veeam 4.0, but we have added a registry key in 4.1 that should allow for this scenario. This key will make the job not fail if backup file is not found on the job's destination path, but instead create the new backup file.

[nickmancini]

Excellent, thanks.

Besides the reg hack, is there anything in particular that is necessary to modify in the job itself (rollback points; perform full backup; etc.)?

Or will the reg hack handle it all?

Thanks again!

[Gostev]

No other changes should be needed.

If the backup file found missing during the incremental pass, job either:
- Fails out with "backup file not found" error (default behavior without reg hack), or
- Automatically performs full backup creating the new full backup file (behavior with reg hack). Along with that, the information about missing backup files chain is deleted from the configuration database to prevent any issues with accessing missing files in future.

We do not want this to be the default behavior, as backup file might have been moved to another folder accidentally. It is better to fail and let the user know and let him put the backup file back, instead of removing all traces of previous backups and starting from scratch like nothing happened. Requiring to explicitly enable this behavior assures that the user knows what he/she is doing.

[nickmancini]

Excellent - Thanks!

Since we manage backups for our clients, we'll know when to apply the hack and when not to.

In a few cases, we write directly to removable media, so we need the hack for those clients.

Otherwise, default settings will work well.

How do I obtain the reg hack?

Thanks!

(PS: 4.1 looks good. Only issue is having to dig up the .lic file when doing an upgrade install over 4.0. Wish it would just use the previously installed license....)

[Gostev]

Create the following key in Veeam hive under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE (where all other Veeam keys are):

Code: Select all

ForceCreateMissingVBK
DWORD
1

[nickmancini]

Excellent!

Thanks!

[netrix]

Hello All,

i hope that this is the right thread for my answer. We use Veeam to Backup 8 VM's. For Desaster Recovery the idea is that we will use 2 Network HD with NFS. One Week we will Backup to Disk1 next week to the other. First week all is OK. Wenn we changed the Disk Veeam failed all Backup's with no config File found.

Any ideas or workaround. Different Backup Jobs will not Work and any new created Job fails to.

Thanks for your help

Reguards Oliver

[Gostev]

Please note that the key above will not help jobs which already failed once due to missing VBK. The key will only affect newly created jobs (and those which had not failed yet).

Additionally, as always please be sure to restart all Veeam services and UI after changing any registry setting. Registry parameters are queried only once, during service and UI start up.

[larry]

I am replacing the raid the Veeam uses. We are not moving any of the data to the new raid, just keeping the raid offline for 30 days, if I need the data I will import. Can I set this reg setting and assign the same drive letters, will Veeam then create the folders and do a full backup ? thanks What is the best way to have Veeam remove the old backups from the DB ?

[admcomputing]

Also, does this registry key work with version 5.0.x?

[Vitaliy S.]

Yes, this reg key is still applicable to v5.

Can I set this reg setting and assign the same drive letters, will Veeam then create the folders and do a full backup ? thanks What is the best way to have Veeam remove the old backups from the DB ?

Yes, if you apply this key to the backup server, then all your backups will be re-created from scratch. The best way to remove all the records from the database is to adjust retention policy and let it do all the job for you.

[NightBird]

Is this reg key always applicable to v6 ?

[Gostev]

No, this key no longer works due to the switch to the new architecture with backup repositories.

[NightBird]

So, how to manage USB rotated drives with v6 ?