Initial Backup Size and Backup Questions.

[LThibx]

I just started using Veeam and have it set up to backup a machine for a client of mine and I have a couple questions about the results.
This a new Win 2012 R2 Essentials Hyper-V host with one VM.
The Hyper-V host is Win 2012 R2 ESS running the Hyper-V role, in an 80GB partition, 26GB Used, running Veeam OnHost proxy.
The VM is Win 2012 R2 ESS, 250GB VHDX, Used Space: 120GB.

The results of my first backup shows the following statistics:
Total size: 250.GB, Data Read: 224.4GB, Transferred: 152.2GB, Backup Size: 147.1GB, Dedupe: 1.2x, Compression: 1.5x
The .vbk in the repository is: 152GB in size.

1. My first question is, why is is the .vbk 32GB larger than the used space in the VM (120GB).
2. Does Veeam included anything from the Host in the backup?
3. My job setup was Incremental, Enable Synthetic fulls on Saturday, Transform previous full backup chains into rollbacks.
Does this make this similar to Reversed Incremental?
4. In regards to question 3, can you (and if so), what are the affects of changing from Incremental to Reversed Incremental for subsequent jobs?

And as a followup to my second question, If I had to rebuild this machine from scratch, Does Veeam include anything to handle restoring the host itself, or do I have setup the host again manually (or restore from a Windows Server backup)?

Appreciate your responses.
Thanks

[Shestakov]

Hello Lonnie,

1. My first question is, why is is the .vbk 32GB larger than the used space in the VM (120GB).

Do you use NTFS? If yes, probably the issue is you had something written on the disk before and despite you deleted the data from the disk it`s physically still there. It has been discussed in another post of the forum.

2. Does Veeam included anything from the Host in the backup?

This part of the question is not clear for me. Do you mean if there is any host info in the VM backup file(.vbk)? Why do you need it if yes?

3. My job setup was Incremental, Enable Synthetic fulls on Saturday, Transform previous full backup chains into rollbacks.
Does this make this similar to Reversed Incremental?

Not really. You can find a comprehensive information in the one or another similar topics.

4. In regards to question 3, can you (and if so), what are the affects of changing from Incremental to Reversed Incremental for subsequent jobs?

Changing Incremental Backup Chains into Reversed Incremental Backup Chains is fully supported, take a look at this thread for more info. Also might be useful to read this discussion of your colleagues.

Nikita

[LThibx]

Hi Nikkita,
Just wanted to follow-up on my previous post and your reply. I read everything you linked to and I have a somewhat better understanding of most of my questions. Just need a bit more of clarification.

For question #2:

2. Does Veeam included anything from the Host in the backup?
This part of the question is not clear for me. Do you mean if there is any host info in the VM backup file(.vbk)? Why do you need it if yes?

What I meant, was, if my complete host went down, and I either had to restore it completely or replace it (host + VMs - bare metal restore), Does Veeam backup the host portion. I believe the answer to this would be no. And if that is true, then what should I consider to back up the host environment, should a bare metal restore be necessary? Or do I have to rebuild the host manually, then restore the VMs?

In regards to questions 3 and 4:

3. My job setup was Incremental, Enable Synthetic fulls on Saturday, Transform previous full backup chains into rollbacks.
Does this make this similar to Reversed Incremental?
Not really. You can find a comprehensive information in the one or another similar topics.
4. In regards to question 3, can you (and if so), what are the affects of changing from Incremental to Reversed Incremental for subsequent jobs?
Changing Incremental Backup Chains into Reversed Incremental Backup Chains is fully supported, take a look at this thread for more info. Also might be useful to read this discussion of your colleagues.

It seems that the two job types are pretty much the same, they just happen at different times, as stated in the Synthetic Backup section of this post: http://forums.veeam.com/post39834.html#p39834
Just stating the above for clarification to others.

An additional question...I am thinking about how to take these backups offsite to the cloud efficiently. What I am referring to is that if I am doing the Synthetic Backup with Transformation, which would produce a new Synthetic on Saturday in my case, or if I was using the Reversed Incremental, which would create a new Synthetic each day. I would not want to send that full backup to the cloud every time they were recreated / updated. So what would I use to decrease the data sent to the cloud? I appreciate your input on this. I will also do further research on my own.

Thanks for you assistance!
Lonnie

[foggy]

What I meant, was, if my complete host went down, and I either had to restore it completely or replace it (host + VMs - bare metal restore), Does Veeam backup the host portion. I believe the answer to this would be no. And if that is true, then what should I consider to back up the host environment, should a bare metal restore be necessary? Or do I have to rebuild the host manually, then restore the VMs?

You can manually rebuild the host (using host profile to facilitate the task) and then restore the VMs on it.

An additional question...I am thinking about how to take these backups offsite to the cloud efficiently. What I am referring to is that if I am doing the Synthetic Backup with Transformation, which would produce a new Synthetic on Saturday in my case, or if I was using the Reversed Incremental, which would create a new Synthetic each day. I would not want to send that full backup to the cloud every time they were recreated / updated. So what would I use to decrease the data sent to the cloud?

Forward incremental with less frequent periodic synthetic fulls is surely a more recommended approach for cloud backups.

[veremin]

I would not want to send that full backup to the cloud every time they were recreated / updated. So what would I use to decrease the data sent to the cloud?

Also, if you're going to copy backups to cloud VM running Windows as operating system, you can assign WAN accelerator role to it and use it as a target for backup copy job. This way, the traffic sent to cloud will be minimized. Thanks.