architecture with Virtual Synthesized Full Backup for tape

[sibinsam]

Hi,
Is there any fix for this issue. I am also facing the same problem. Ticket id 711592.

[veremin]

There several issues reported in this topic. Can you elaborate on what particular problem you have? Synthesized full being created for reversed incremental chain or Synthesized full being created several times during a day? Thanks.

[sibinsam]

Synthesized full not being created unless there is a change to the vbk file. If we check the "process incremental files" all the vibs will be copied to tape. However if "process incremental files" is not checked the synthetic backup does occur but on the next run it says "no new files to backup" unless the vbk is modified by a change in retention policy.

[veremin]

Synthesized full not being created unless there is a change to the vbk file.

Currently, it's by design. Processing increments option has to be enabled to make tape job create Synthesized full backup. Thanks.

[sibinsam]

So we cannot have only a synthetic full without copying the vib also to tape?

[veremin]

Correct.

[sibinsam]

so i guess ive got to do a reverse incremental to copy only the latest vbk to tape. I cant copy all the vib to tape because of limited number of tapes (we are on LTO 4) and management policy.
Was planning on using this feature to copy one full vbk to tape end of every month and also utilizing the forward forever incremental feature of v8.

Will there be any change/update in this method in patch 1?

[veremin]

Was planning on using this feature to copy one full vbk to tape end of every month and also utilizing the forward forever incremental feature of v8.

In case of monthly schedule, I believe you can achieve what you're after. Specify a monthly schedule for a backup to tape job, enable process increments option, and select the very same day (monthly schedule) for a synthesized full. This way, a backup to tape job should create only a full backup on tapes once a month. Thanks.

[sibinsam]

Hi,
tried the above method but now job fails with error "Synthetic full BackupSrvFileToTape failed Insufficient system resources exist to complete the requested service. Failed to read data from the file"
Any suggestions?

[foggy]

I suggest contacting technical support to take a closer look at your logs.

[Dima P.]

Also, please, make sure that you have installed patch 1: Release Notes for Veeam Backup & Replication 8.0 Patch 1. Thank you.

[haslund]

Backup Job is running Forever Forward.
I want to send a full backup to tape every Saturday and not process any incremental files.
Any way to make this work or do I need to wait for a hotfix?

I have created support case 00820041.

Thank you in advance.

[veremin]

I want to send a full backup to tape every Saturday and not process any incremental files. Any way to make this work or do I need to wait for a hotfix?

Currently, synthesized full backup requires process incremental option enabled. We'll disregard that requirement in patch 2.

[haslund]

Currently, synthesized full backup requires process incremental option enabled. We'll disregard that requirement in patch 2.

No chance for a private hotfix before patch 2? Even untested?

[haslund]

Currently, synthesized full backup requires process incremental option enabled. We'll disregard that requirement in patch 2.

What if I setup the following:
Media Pool: New Media set every run
Backup to Tape: Full only on Saturdays. Enable Incrementals and then ONLY schedule the job to run on Saturdays?

Would that not work out?

[veremin]

The increments that have not been copied will be archived that time.

[hoFFy]

The increments that have not been copied will be archived that time.

resulting in a huge amount of data written to tape!

[veremin]

Yes. But as I've pointed out previously, we consider the existing logic (that requires you to enable increment processing to create synthesized full backup) non-ideal and are going to modify it in the upcoming patch.

Thank you for understanding.

[resruss]

Looking at implementing End of Month to tape on a quite large (21 TB of a mix of VBK,VIB,VRB) mix of backup sets this week.
All jobs except one (Reversed) are Forever Forward Incrementals.

We currently have Backup to DIsk daily, then Backup Copy to Cloud Connect and looking to perform End of Months to tape.

There's around 7 TB of incrementals, which we're not wanting to write to tape, which is where I've found myself with this thread.

Just wanting to confirm up the best way to implement end of month with our current backup methods to tape:
- We're on Veeam 8 Update 2, has the Process Incremental Files requirement been removed for Synthesized Backup been removed?
- Backup to Tape job, scheduled for a specific day of the month
- Disable Process Incremental Files
- Is create Synthetic Full needed (this is a media pool option from memory), if so, do I just specify the same day that the backup to tape job is scheduled?
- Given the large data set, our backup job is likely to be locked for a couple of days at at time, what's the best way to ensure that both the Cloud Connect and the actual Backup job are paused while writing to tape, can this be automated?
- What's the best Media Set option to use for this media pool, thinking it would be Create new media set for every backup session?

Edit: Added question regarding media set creation

[veremin]

- We're on Veeam 8 Update 2, has the Process Incremental Files requirement been removed for Synthesized Backup been removed?
- Backup to Tape job, scheduled for a specific day of the month
- Disable Process Incremental Files

Correct.

- Is create Synthetic Full needed (this is a media pool option from memory)

It can be found in the setting of backup to tape job (Media Pool page -> Schedule).

if so, do I just specify the same day that the backup to tape job is scheduled?

Correct.

- Given the large data set, our backup job is likely to be locked for a couple of days at at time, what's the best way to ensure that both the Cloud Connect and the actual Backup job are paused while writing to tape, can this be automated?

Pre/Post job scripts disabling/enabling corresponding jobs might be the best option.

- What's the best Media Set option to use for this media pool, thinking it would be Create new media set for every backup session?

New media set for every backup session looks like the best way to go.

Thanks.

[timmi2704]

Just a short one which might belong to this topic:

Is it intended, that a tape job currently processing a synthesized .vbk can't be stopped? If I stop the job, the creation process of the .vbk continues until the .vsb file has been created completely, then the job stops.
Due to the amount of data the job has to process, this takes some hours in worst case, during which the repository is heavily used.
Is there something I can do to stop this process?

Thanks

[foggy]

Timo, this is not intended, so please open a case with technical support and let them take a look.

[hoFFy]

I'm not done with this topic

If I have a forever forward incremental Backup2Disk job running Monday evening at 08pm and it runs 2 hours and I configured a BackuptoDisk job that should run after this job, then it creates a synthetic full and runs until Tuesday at about 1AM.
On Tuesday the B2D runs again, finishes at 10PM and the BackuptoTape job says it has no new files to backup and finishes with this nice green tick suggesting that everything is okay.
But nothing is okay the customer won't have a backup on tape media for that day.

It had to find out this odd behavior in my own in support case #01734672 where I wondered why the customer saw two "different" jobs in the history and the supporters were not able to tell me that its the same job, but the name changes only when data is written to tape, this case led me to the odd behavior written above...

Shouldn't be there a warning instead of a tick, if no data is written to tape? Or wouldn't it be even nicer if the wizards or somewhere else would be a warning for the user if the job won't write data to tape, if it will be configured as I did?
Ans why is data only written once a day to tape? There IS new data to write to tape, but the logic only seems to check if the B2T jape has already been run on the same day once before.

[veremin]

May I ask you - what behaviour do you expect to get in this situation? Being executed second time a day should a backup to tape job synthesize a new virtual full on tapes or copy newly created increments, instead? Moreover, is processing increments even enabled in the job settings? Thanks.

[hoFFy]

Processing increments isnt't enabled, I would like Veeam to create a full backup every day.
The tape job isn't executed the second time a day. The first time it began in the evening the day before and ran over midnight till the next day began. Thats a huge different if you configure the source B2D job to run in the evening.
I would expect that the tape jobs starts in the evening after the B2D job, runs longer than midnight. The next day in the evening the B2D job runs again, followed by the B2T job putting the new files (new full backup for that day) on a new tape. This way I would be able to have a new full backup once a day.
The big problem I believe here is if the job runs longer than midnight...

[hoFFy]

Yesterday I changed the time when the B2T Job should run to 00:05 o'clock and it ran fine, bringing the data from April 11th to tape.
There IS definitely a logical problem with jobs running longer than midnight I believe.

[hoFFy]

Okay, I found the reason / solution together with the support:
If you run your B2D jobs in forever forward incremental mode then it it definitely necessary that the B2T jobs finishes on the same day, and not at day x+1 (if x is the day when the B2D ran and the B2T jobs started). If thats the case, than you'll have the problem that the B2T job won't find new files to save on tape.
If you want to have a full backup on tape every day, as in my case, than you have to use the old reversed incremental mode.
More details can be found here: https://helpcenter.veeam.com/backup/vsp ... rvals.html

I already made a feature request to use the "new" forever forward incremental mode together with B2T wiothout these shortcomings.

By the way: I changed the B2D mode at one customer who saves his backups to a LO6 tape library and the performance for writing backups to tape changed from ~50-60MB/sec to 150 - 160 MB/sec with reversed incremental.
Is that normal? What does this cause exactly?