-
- Enthusiast
- Posts: 46
- Liked: 7 times
- Joined: Dec 04, 2013 8:13 am
- Full Name: Andreas Holzhammer
- Contact:
Understanding Backup Copy Jobs and GFS
Hi,
fairly new to Veeam and going through a steep lerning curve, I'm afraid.
I have inherited a Veeam 7 Installation that backs up several (~10) VMs to an iSCSI attached NAS using a set of three schedules:
1. daily backups, keeping 14 restore points. This is to provide daily backups for two weeks. It is configured with Standard Incremental and Synthentic Full, so I have more than 14 restore points on disk, dependent on the oldest available backup. I guess moving to Reverse Incremental would make sense here.
2. weekly backups, run every saturday, with 4 restore points. This actually creates _two_ backups every week, one incremental saturday night, one full sunday.
3. monthly backups, run every last sunday of the month. This creates full backups _every week_.
All three backup jobs back up into the same repository.
Being puzzled why the weeklies create two backups, and the monthlies run weekly, I have looked into Backup Copy Jobs to provide my GFS retention, but I'm not quite sure how to set it up.
Do I Keep my daily schedule, and configure one Backup Copy Job to run daily, keep two restore points, and keep 4 weeklys and 5 monthlys for archival purposes
or
Do I only keep two (or even one?) restore Points in my daily schedule, and configure the backup copy job to run daily, keep 14 restore Points, and keep 4 weeklys and 5 monthlys for archival purposes
The second option looks the most straight Forward to me, having all backup/archival settings in one job, and probably taking most advantage of VEEAM dedup. No backup target dedup available, I'm afraid.
Any help/directions are greatly appreciated.
Regards,
Andreas
fairly new to Veeam and going through a steep lerning curve, I'm afraid.
I have inherited a Veeam 7 Installation that backs up several (~10) VMs to an iSCSI attached NAS using a set of three schedules:
1. daily backups, keeping 14 restore points. This is to provide daily backups for two weeks. It is configured with Standard Incremental and Synthentic Full, so I have more than 14 restore points on disk, dependent on the oldest available backup. I guess moving to Reverse Incremental would make sense here.
2. weekly backups, run every saturday, with 4 restore points. This actually creates _two_ backups every week, one incremental saturday night, one full sunday.
3. monthly backups, run every last sunday of the month. This creates full backups _every week_.
All three backup jobs back up into the same repository.
Being puzzled why the weeklies create two backups, and the monthlies run weekly, I have looked into Backup Copy Jobs to provide my GFS retention, but I'm not quite sure how to set it up.
Do I Keep my daily schedule, and configure one Backup Copy Job to run daily, keep two restore points, and keep 4 weeklys and 5 monthlys for archival purposes
or
Do I only keep two (or even one?) restore Points in my daily schedule, and configure the backup copy job to run daily, keep 14 restore Points, and keep 4 weeklys and 5 monthlys for archival purposes
The second option looks the most straight Forward to me, having all backup/archival settings in one job, and probably taking most advantage of VEEAM dedup. No backup target dedup available, I'm afraid.
Any help/directions are greatly appreciated.
Regards,
Andreas
-
- VP, Product Management
- Posts: 27116
- Liked: 2720 times
- Joined: Mar 30, 2009 9:13 am
- Full Name: Vitaliy Safarov
- Contact:
Re: Understanding Backup Copy Jobs and GFS
Hi Andreas,
You need to keep your daily schedule of the regular backup job and configure your backup copy with the GFS settings you want: keep X number of weekly backups and X number of monthly backups. Each restore point created according to the GFS settings will be a full backup.
Thanks!
You need to keep your daily schedule of the regular backup job and configure your backup copy with the GFS settings you want: keep X number of weekly backups and X number of monthly backups. Each restore point created according to the GFS settings will be a full backup.
Thanks!
-
- Veeam Software
- Posts: 21070
- Liked: 2115 times
- Joined: Jul 11, 2011 10:22 am
- Full Name: Alexander Fogelson
- Contact:
Re: Understanding Backup Copy Jobs and GFS
Most likely you have synthetic full backup enabled on the specified day, aside from periodic job schedule.andreash wrote:2. weekly backups, run every saturday, with 4 restore points. This actually creates _two_ backups every week, one incremental saturday night, one full sunday.
3. monthly backups, run every last sunday of the month. This creates full backups _every week_.
-
- Enthusiast
- Posts: 46
- Liked: 7 times
- Joined: Dec 04, 2013 8:13 am
- Full Name: Andreas Holzhammer
- Contact:
Re: Understanding Backup Copy Jobs and GFS
Hi Vitaly,Vitaliy S. wrote:You need to keep your daily schedule of the regular backup job and configure your backup copy with the GFS settings you want: keep X number of weekly backups and X number of monthly backups. Each restore point created according to the GFS settings will be a full backup.
thanks for your quick feedback. I have changed now to:
- Backup Job "Daily Backups", Reverse Incrementals, 14 Restore Points
- Backup Copy Job "GFS", copy every day, keep two restore points, and keep 4 weekly/6 monthly restore points for archive.
Is there anything else I could do to optimize my setting?
Spot on! Thanks!foggy wrote: Most likely you have synthetic full backup enabled on the specified day, aside from periodic job schedule.
-
- Veeam Software
- Posts: 21070
- Liked: 2115 times
- Joined: Jul 11, 2011 10:22 am
- Full Name: Alexander Fogelson
- Contact:
Re: Understanding Backup Copy Jobs and GFS
Not really, as it's a pretty straightforward setup. Btw, weren't you considering to have offsite copies of your backups also?andreash wrote:Is there anything else I could do to optimize my setting?
-
- Enthusiast
- Posts: 46
- Liked: 7 times
- Joined: Dec 04, 2013 8:13 am
- Full Name: Andreas Holzhammer
- Contact:
Re: Understanding Backup Copy Jobs and GFS
Not for now. Offsites will come later, and will simply be another copy job to a different repository.foggy wrote:Not really, as it's a pretty straightforward setup. Btw, weren't you considering to have offsite copies of your backups also?
Thanks a lot for your quick help!
-
- Enthusiast
- Posts: 46
- Liked: 7 times
- Joined: Dec 04, 2013 8:13 am
- Full Name: Andreas Holzhammer
- Contact:
Re: Understanding Backup Copy Jobs and GFS
Ok, looks like I still get something wrong here.
For simplicity I had decided to have both my daily backup job and the backup copy job use the same target repository. This was meant to have all daily, weekly and monthly backups in the same location.
Unfortunately the backup copy job does not copy data. It simply sits there waiting for new restore points, even when the daily backups have finished.
So, does the backup copy job automagically use existing backups in the repository, and keep track of the GFS settings, or do I have to set an Independent target repository (since moving from an existing setup this would mean to resize nearly all of my backup repositories)?
For simplicity I had decided to have both my daily backup job and the backup copy job use the same target repository. This was meant to have all daily, weekly and monthly backups in the same location.
Unfortunately the backup copy job does not copy data. It simply sits there waiting for new restore points, even when the daily backups have finished.
So, does the backup copy job automagically use existing backups in the repository, and keep track of the GFS settings, or do I have to set an Independent target repository (since moving from an existing setup this would mean to resize nearly all of my backup repositories)?
-
- Veeam Software
- Posts: 21070
- Liked: 2115 times
- Joined: Jul 11, 2011 10:22 am
- Full Name: Alexander Fogelson
- Contact:
Re: Understanding Backup Copy Jobs and GFS
This behavior is expected, since it is by design for backup copy job not to look for source restore points in the repository that is specified as the target.
-
- Product Manager
- Posts: 20284
- Liked: 2258 times
- Joined: Oct 26, 2012 3:28 pm
- Full Name: Vladimir Eremin
- Contact:
Re: Understanding Backup Copy Jobs and GFS
If possible, you can create additional folder on the target device, add it as a repository to backup console and specify it as a target for backup copy job. This way, the above mentioned limitation will be bypassed.
Thanks.
Thanks.
-
- Enthusiast
- Posts: 46
- Liked: 7 times
- Joined: Dec 04, 2013 8:13 am
- Full Name: Andreas Holzhammer
- Contact:
Re: Understanding Backup Copy Jobs and GFS
A late follow up question after having set this up and working fine since several months, I still have the feeling things could be optimized on the backup copy Job side.
Current Setup is like this:
Regular Backup: Reverse Incremental, 21 restore points to keep. I will add synthetic fulls every 4 weeks, other than that I'm happy with this setup
Backup Copy Job: Run daily, keep 2 restore Points (Minimum possible), GFS Retention with 4 weeklies every sunday and 6 monthlies every last day of the month.
Basically, the Backup Copy Job is only there to populate the GFS scheme.
Do I really have to run the Job daily, or is it sufficient to run it every saturday or sunday, and save the Backup Transformations every day?
I'm worried what happens if the last day of the month is a monday, and my Backup Copy Job only runs on weekends. Would it still create a Restore Point for the correct day?
Kind Regards,
Andreas
Current Setup is like this:
Regular Backup: Reverse Incremental, 21 restore points to keep. I will add synthetic fulls every 4 weeks, other than that I'm happy with this setup
Backup Copy Job: Run daily, keep 2 restore Points (Minimum possible), GFS Retention with 4 weeklies every sunday and 6 monthlies every last day of the month.
Basically, the Backup Copy Job is only there to populate the GFS scheme.
Do I really have to run the Job daily, or is it sufficient to run it every saturday or sunday, and save the Backup Transformations every day?
I'm worried what happens if the last day of the month is a monday, and my Backup Copy Job only runs on weekends. Would it still create a Restore Point for the correct day?
Kind Regards,
Andreas
-
- Veeam Software
- Posts: 21070
- Liked: 2115 times
- Joined: Jul 11, 2011 10:22 am
- Full Name: Alexander Fogelson
- Contact:
Re: Understanding Backup Copy Jobs and GFS
For pure GFS purpose, it is sufficient to run the job weekly. However keep in mind, that every GFS restore point is a full backup available on this day (not the newly copied VMs state, which is saved in the incremental restore point created at that day).andreash wrote:Do I really have to run the Job daily, or is it sufficient to run it every saturday or sunday, and save the Backup Transformations every day?
In this case the full backup from the next synchronization interval will be used. The tricky restore points selection algorithm is described in the corresponding user guide section, worth reviewing.andreash wrote:I'm worried what happens if the last day of the month is a monday, and my Backup Copy Job only runs on weekends. Would it still create a Restore Point for the correct day?
-
- Enthusiast
- Posts: 46
- Liked: 7 times
- Joined: Dec 04, 2013 8:13 am
- Full Name: Andreas Holzhammer
- Contact:
Re: Understanding Backup Copy Jobs and GFS
Hi foggy,
thanks for your clarification. I had reviewed the user guide, but with english not being my native language I wasn't quite sure I understood everything correctly.
Kind Regards,
Andreas
thanks for your clarification. I had reviewed the user guide, but with english not being my native language I wasn't quite sure I understood everything correctly.
Kind Regards,
Andreas
-
- Veeam Software
- Posts: 21070
- Liked: 2115 times
- Joined: Jul 11, 2011 10:22 am
- Full Name: Alexander Fogelson
- Contact:
Re: Understanding Backup Copy Jobs and GFS
Glad I could help. Let us know if you need any further explanations.
-
- Enthusiast
- Posts: 78
- Liked: 4 times
- Joined: Jan 12, 2012 3:45 am
- Full Name: claudiofolu
- Contact:
Re: Understanding Backup Copy Jobs and GFS
Sorry for the late followup on this, but I dont undestand this statement:
Why is that? I also have my backup copy job pointed to the same repository and is the backup copy job is not copying anything.foggy wrote:This behavior is expected, since it is by design for backup copy job not to look for source restore points in the repository that is specified as the target.
-
- Veeam Software
- Posts: 21070
- Liked: 2115 times
- Joined: Jul 11, 2011 10:22 am
- Full Name: Alexander Fogelson
- Contact:
Re: Understanding Backup Copy Jobs and GFS
There is an inbuilt mechanism that prevents backup copy job from looking restore points in the repository that is specified as backup copy job target (to avoid copying restore points created by itself). If you need to store both backup and backup copy files in one location, you can simply create an additional folder there and specify it as a separate target repository for backup copy job.
Who is online
Users browsing this forum: Bing [Bot], Gostev, Sam.Sutcliffe, slackhouse and 138 guests