Host-based backup of VMware vSphere VMs.
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bjfails
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RDX Drives

Post by bjfails »

In my backup scheme I use RDX drives, which is a hard drive version of a removable tape, which we cycle weekly. 2 weekly tapes then a monthly. They are USB 3.0 attached to the Veeam host. Currently I do a daily, Mon - Fri, incremental backup with a full on Friday. Then I am using a XCopy batch file to copy the backups from the repository to the tapes. We used to use B & R 6.5 but just recently upgraded to v8 so was thinking of using newer techniques. The issue I am running into is that B & R does not see the RDX as a "Tape Media" so I cannot get Tape Backup to work. The RDX have enough space to store the complete backup with 500gb to spare. I want to do a weekly Full Backup on Saturday to the RDX drives but I have found no way to just run a full backup without incremental. How can I accomplish this or am I stuck with the XCopy command even with v8?
PTide
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Re: RDX Drives

Post by PTide »

Hi,

Does your OS see RDX as a tape device?
foggy
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Re: RDX Drives

Post by foggy » 1 person likes this post

Typically RDX drive is added as a Windows repository backed by rotated hard drives, so you could use backup copy job to back up to it.
bjfails
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Re: RDX Drives

Post by bjfails »

The OS sees it as a Hard Drive I was able to successfully add it as a repository. I am really not familiar with Backup Copy since we were on 6.5 I did setup a Backup Copy but not sure if it will work properly. I set it's network permissions to the weekend only so it would consume bandwidth during the week. and copy every 3 days. I'm backing up my Daily backup job but i only want to keep 1 restore point since 2 will not fit on the RDX, but it will not let me choose only 1. My Daily job is set to Incremental with Synthetic and to transform previous into rollbacks so my repository only ever has 1 full backup. So my question is if I switch out the tapes on Monday will the Backup Copy break since the next tape will not have the previous version of the backup?
bjfails
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Re: RDX Drives

Post by bjfails »

Sorry I just read my previous post and a little vague so going to layout better:

Backup Job "Daily" to NAS:
- Restore Points Set to 1
- Incremental
- Create Synthetic Full on Friday Night
- Transform Previous into rollbacks
- All the rest default settings

Backup Copy "Weekly" to RDX drives:
- Copy every 3 day starting at 12:00 AM
- Virtual Machines set to "Daily" backup job
- Target set to RDX (Note Tape swapped out every Friday morning)
- Restore points to Keep 2 (But only want 1 I think)
- Keep the following restore points for archival - false
- No encryption since tight control of tapes
- Data transfer Direct
- Schedule Saturday at 11 a through Monday 6 am
foggy
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Re: RDX Drives

Post by foggy » 1 person likes this post

You can read about backup copy jobs in the corresponding user guide section. The second (and all subsequent) restore point will be incremental, so you can set retention to, say, 5 to have a short chain of weekly restore points on each of the drives. Alternatively, if you need just a single weekly full on each of the drives, I'd recommend setting the Copy every interval to 7 days and perform cleanup of existing backup files prior each cycle, using the ForceDeleteBackupFiles registry key.
bjfails
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Re: RDX Drives

Post by bjfails »

Thank you foggy for the info. One more quick question when I add the registry keys the location is not job specific so is it going to delete the folder and contents for the "Daily" job as well?
foggy
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Re: RDX Drives

Post by foggy »

Yes, however only if some backup file from the latest full backup chain for this job is missing. So consider using some external cleanup script instead.
bjfails
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Re: RDX Drives

Post by bjfails »

Okay yeah I already have a Batch script that cleans the RDXs before use so will stick with using that and use the ForceCreateMissingVBK. Thank you for helping out a Veeam dummy. :)
foggy
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Re: RDX Drives

Post by foggy »

You're welcome. With v8, you can just enable rotation on the repository itself, no need to use ForceCreateMissingVBK anymore.
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