Different external USB Drives for offsite backup

[fabechkit]

I have tried to see what the best solution is, to run offsite backup.

Currently, we have a customer running:
1 HyperV with 3 VMs, taking backups to a NAS, and from the NAS, a copy job over IPSEc site 2 site VPN to another NAS.

Customer wants to use 4 external USB disk, to take offsite backup from primary NAS.
We have tried to make a new copy job, to move the normal backup job til the external USB, but this doesnt work, as we need to click "Full active backup", and after that, the customer doesnt know when its done, or starts to move the new backup points..

Is there a method, to make automaticly movement of all backup files from a backup job, to 4 different USB devices randomly connected?

[Mildur]

Hi Alexander

Do you have tried to configure the usb disk as rotated disks?

They must be connected to a windows or linux server to use the Rotated Disk feature.
Rotated disk feature will not work, when the usb disk is connected to the nas and you use SMB or NFS to access the disk.

Veeam can use a backup copy job to copy the restore points to the usb disks.
First one on a disk will always be a Active full.
See this guide on how backup copy jobs behave on rotated disks backup repositories.

[fabechkit]

No, i havent tried that yet. I would like to know the 100% right solution

Mhm okay, its running into the NAS at the moment, as mapping into HyperV isnt that good i think?

[Mildur]

If you want to rotate usb drives, you need this feature. And this doesn't work, when added as a NAS Share over the synology.
Without it, each time you rotate the disk, veeam would say, that backup files are missing. I assume, that's the reason why do have todo manual active fulls now.

The HyperV Server hosts already veeam components like veeam datamover and hyperv OnHost Proxy.
I don't see an issue to plug in the usb disk directly on the hypervisor to copy the backups to the disk.

[fabechkit]

Thanks.

Veeam B&R is running on the VM, and not the HyperV. Can i add the external USB HDD to the HyperV, and how to add it, to Veeam as repository? As \\hyperv01\d$\ ?

Yes, sounds right about why i need active full. What i need to do from here?

[Mildur]

Yes, you can. But definitely not with \\hyperv01\d$\.
That would be again a network share, and remember, rotated disk doesn't work with network shares (SMB,NFS).

You can follow this guide to create a backup repository from the usb HDD.
Choose your HyperV as a Repository Server. You will see the connected USB HDD.

All Disks must have the same drive letter, the first time Veeam uses the disk. After the disk was used once, then it doesn't matter which drive letter it gets.
Configure your backup copy job to target the copies to the newly created backup repo.

[fabechkit]

Thanks, that helped me! But with a copy job, with the solution you came with, we still have the issue, it will keep copying new data/restore points to the USB HDD - Right?

[Mildur]

I don't see any issues with copying restore points to the usb disk. That's the reason of a copy job.
You want to have new restore points of the three vm's on the usb disk, If I understand your goal. You have an issue that each disk, you need to start an active full again.
If you want to have a second copy of your restore points on USB Disks, this is the way to go.
I'm very sorry, If there is a misunderstanding on my side.
For the part with the "customer doesn't know when Copy Job is finished", you can configure mail notification or the customer must look in the VBR Console and swap the disk, when the copy process is finished.

There are other more automatic solutions like SOBR (with capacity tier) or Cloud Connect where the customer doesn't have to do anything. It just works. I assume, that the customer is licensed, so he can use such features.
If not, for example he is using the community edition, then it would be against veeams end user license agreements if you are involved as a managed service provider.

[fabechkit]

He is using Veeam backup and replication licensed version Thanks, will try!

[Mildur]

Hi Alexander

I'm very sorry. I have shared some misinformation about the compatibility with rotated drives.
You can use it with an CIFS share based Repo, but not with NFS based shared Storage.

From a performance view, please consider to connect the usb drives directly on a windows machine (your hyperv for an example), like I already proposed.
If you use a CIFS Share to access the usb drives, veeam must first transfer the entire restore point to the cifs gateway server and from there, the restore points will be transferred back to the cifs share before they are written to the usb disk.
If you connect the usb drives to the hyperv server, and the hyper server is configured as the cifs gateway server, veeam will only need to transfer once from the nas to the hyperv server and the hyperv server writes the data directly to the usb drive.

[fabechkit]

Thanks!

[fabechkit]

It seems to work with the ned HDD. What happens, when i change the disk to a new one? Does it create and active full, or? Becuase, if we loss the first disk, we only have incrementals on the second disk?

[Mildur]

Yes, first time you swap to a new HDD drive (make sure, it has the same drive letter as the first HDD had when you configured the rotated backup repo), veeam will copy an entire full to this disk.

It is explained here.

Backup Copy Jobs

Backup copy jobs are performed in the following way:

1) Veeam Backup & Replication creates a regular backup chain on the currently attached drive.

2) When you swap drives, and the attached drive is empty, Veeam Backup & Replication creates a full backup on it. If there is a backup chain on the drive, Veeam Backup & Replication creates a new incremental backup and adds it to the backup chain. The latest incremental backup existing in the backup chain is used as a starting point for the new incremental backup.

3) [For external drives attached to Microsoft Windows servers] Veeam Backup & Replication checks the retention policy set for the job. If some backup files in the backup chain are outdated, Veeam Backup & Replication removes them from the backup chain.