Discussions related to exporting backups to tape and backing up directly to tape.
Post Reply
nunciate
Expert
Posts: 247
Liked: 39 times
Joined: May 21, 2013 9:08 pm
Full Name: Alan Wells
Contact:

Backup Copy to Tape

Post by nunciate »

Are there any plans to add a the ability to roll up incremental changes to backup copy VBK files on a selected schedule?

Today if I have a backup copy job that is set to keep 2 restore points I get a VBK and a VIB for the 2 points. Each day a new incremental copy is done and the full is transformed with the previous days data.
From what I understand this is true no matter how many restore points you have. Once you reach that number it starts rolling up the oldest incremental restore point into the full.

This poses an issue for me. My management requires that I backup my DR Backup Copy to tape each night. My main backup jobs and backup copy jobs run on the server in my production facility. The proxy server in DR has the repositories that I use to send backup copies to tape. You can't just create a regular backup to tape job and choose the repository as it will not recognize the backups. So I am left with doing a file level backup. I realized today, that I would have to do a full tape out of the entire folder every day to be able to do this. That will not work. I have almost 40Tb of backup copy data in both VBK and VIB files.

I thought I would be able to do file to tape jobs and just pick up the VIB files during the week and the VBK files on the weekends but that wouldn't work either. If I tape out the full on the weekend I am good. If I tape out the next incremental I am good there too. When I tape out the next incremental the chain would be broken because the previous incremental has been deleted and rolled into the full. Is that logic correct?

It would be great if I had an option that said keep 30 days of restore points but only roll up the changes to the VBK on Fridays. Much like we have in the regular backup jobs today.
veremin
Product Manager
Posts: 20270
Liked: 2252 times
Joined: Oct 26, 2012 3:28 pm
Full Name: Vladimir Eremin
Contact:

Re: Backup Copy to Tape

Post by veremin »

Hi, Alan,

According to the plan, backup to tape job should support backup copy job as a source in the product release.
I thought I would be able to do file to tape jobs and just pick up the VIB files during the week and the VBK files on the weekends but that wouldn't work either. If I tape out the full on the weekend I am good. If I tape out the next incremental I am good there too. When I tape out the next incremental the chain would be broken because the previous incremental has been deleted and rolled into the full. Is that logic correct?
You can probably create to different file to tape jobs. Having different file masks (.vbk, .vib), as well as, schedules, one will run on daily basis processing incremental files only, the other one will run on the given day only (say, Sunday) processing full files.

Thanks.
nunciate
Expert
Posts: 247
Liked: 39 times
Joined: May 21, 2013 9:08 pm
Full Name: Alan Wells
Contact:

Re: Backup Copy to Tape

Post by nunciate »

Thanks for the reply. I do run separate file to tape jobs today as you described. My concern is that the data would not be restorable from those tapes. Here is a scenario. Tell me if this sounds correct to you.

This is assuming 2 restore points on the backup copy.
Friday Night: Full Backup Copy occurs creating a VBK file.
Saturday: File to tape job masked to backup the VBK file runs.
Monday Night: Daily Incremental backup copy runs creating a VIB file.
Monday Night: File to tape job masked to backup the VIB files runs.
Tuesday Night: Daily incremental backup copy runs creating a new VIB file. Because of 2 day retention the Monday incremental file is rolled into the Full VBK and then removed.
Tuesday Night: File to tape job masked to backup VIB files runs. This is the point that I am concerned about.

Wednesday comes and I need to restore the entire VM back from tape to production using the Weekly Full from the Saturday tape out and the Incrementals from Monday & Tuesday. I don't think this will work.
If I restore the Full from Friday and the incremental from Monday I can restore the VM up to that point. If I try to restore the Tuesday Incremental the chain would be broken because on Tuesday the Monday incremental was rolled into the VBK from Friday thus creating a new chain. I would need the transformed full from Monday and the Tuesday incremental to be able to restore from Tuesday.

Does that all sounds about right? Even if I had a 30 restore points I would still have the same issue because the oldest incremental file is always rolled into the VBK before removing it based on restore point settings.
veremin
Product Manager
Posts: 20270
Liked: 2252 times
Joined: Oct 26, 2012 3:28 pm
Full Name: Vladimir Eremin
Contact:

Re: Backup Copy to Tape

Post by veremin »

Yes, the restore question, or more specifically, question of matching restore points to each would be a big deal here. If I were you, I would probably process only .vbk on daily basis or weekly basis (if tape space is your concern). Thanks.
nunciate
Expert
Posts: 247
Liked: 39 times
Joined: May 21, 2013 9:08 pm
Full Name: Alan Wells
Contact:

Re: Backup Copy to Tape

Post by nunciate »

I am not concerned with space so much as I am with time. Taping out all of those full VBK files will take a while. Our underlying storage is too slow for that in the location where the backup copies are stored. It takes all weekend to do the full tape out for everything. So doing it all every night isn't an option for now. I will have to figure something else out. My storage is a NetApp FAS device with LUNs presented over fiber to the backup server but we have seen very slow backup times to that storage and restore times with that storage. We have a plan to replace it but until then maybe I will just do NDMP to tape for the NetApp volumes. That would go straight over fiber and be much faster.
veremin
Product Manager
Posts: 20270
Liked: 2252 times
Joined: Oct 26, 2012 3:28 pm
Full Name: Vladimir Eremin
Contact:

Re: Backup Copy to Tape

Post by veremin »

Not sure what can be suggested here, as the speed problem seems to be related to the target side mostly.

May be you can:

- provide physical backup server with couple of local disks
- assign repository role to them
- create additional backup job with short retention
- point the newly created job to the local repository
- use the job as the source for the tape job

This way, the tape job performance should increase.

Thanks.
Post Reply

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 18 guests