backup only the latest vbk per job to tape

[joergr]

Hey there,

sorry if this would be an easy one but I am too lazy right now to google my head - so let´s start: I do have a retention policy of 14 days and after veem b+r 4.1.2 finishes every night i take the tape app and backup the vbk file to it while skipping the vrb files (i use be12 for that but i could use any other tape backup prog). now our policy has changed. we have to do a full backup once a week. now my problem would be: i can easily tell any backup-to-tape app (like be) to just backup the vbk files (which i do NOW). But hey, if i´ll do a full backup every week, let´s say on sunday, and my retention policy is 14 i would backup to tape two vbk files for each job which doesn´t really makes any sense. So you guys, do you have ANY idea how to get be or some other backup-to-tape app to just backup the vbk files, skip the vrb files BUT if there are more than one vbk file in the same folder to just use the very latest one?

Ah and please understand and get this right: The forward incremental feature of V5 won´t help me because i WANT TO backup the latest very full every night. I don´t like the idea to backup incrementals to tape, makes things only more complicated in case of a real disaster.

Anyone an idea?

best regards,
Joerg

[Vitaliy S.]

Hi Joerg,

That should be an easy one, if you could use scripting before offloading the backup files to tape. If I were you I would search the backup folder for the file with latest date modified, which will obviously be the VBK file you need, then copy this file to tape.

Here are some links with script examples that should help:
http://www.dbforums.com/perl-dbi/121673 ... ctory.html
http://blog.astradele.com/2008/02/14/wi ... fied-file/

Thanks!

[joergr]

Hi Vitaly,

thanks a lot. Now: Do you have any idea how to teach such a script to a standard program like for example backup exec? Would be great

best regards,
Joerg

[Gostev]

There are some existing topics on forum, search for backupexec script
http://ict-freak.nl/2009/08/20/veeam-ba ... e-by-side/

[joergr]

Hi Anton,

trust me, i searched everything and nothing matched my question. And the link you just sent me can´t answer it either. It just describes how to call be and certain call options. Any other ideas?

Best regards,
Joerg

[Vitaliy S.]

Actually, there is no need to teach BE to execute such scripts. Why not to copy VBK file to a separate folder and then launch the BE job to grab the file from that specified folder?

To put it another way, I would recommend to create one single script that contains both, the sorting code above and the script to launch BE job automatically, as it is described in the topic below:
http://www.veeam.com/forums/viewtopic.p ... ipt#p12368

Hope this helps!

[tsightler]

My suggestion would be to write a script that uses "fsutil" to create a hardlink to the most recent VBK files in another directory. Then configure BE to simply backup this alternate directory rather than the main Veeam backup directory. Hardlinks are basically just an alternate directory entry to the same file so they don't require you to make a second copy of the file and you don't need any extra disk space.

Basically the script would use the techniques from the post above to identify the most recent VBK file and then create hardlinks to them in a subdirectory. Have BE backup this subdirectory and then, after BE is done, it could run another script to remove the hardlinks.

Creating a hardlink with fsutil is quite easy, the syntax is basically as follows:

fsutil hardlink create new_filename existing_filename

So I could envision something like this:

Assuming you backup your files to C:\Backup, create a subdirectory called C:\Backup\Tape and write a script which hardlinks the most recent VBK file to the C:\Backup\Tape directory with a command like:

fsutil hardlink create C:\Backup\Tape\Job.vbk C:\Backup\Job.vbk

Now run the BE job to backup the files in C:\Backup\Tape\Job.vbk and you should be good to go. Hardlinks are magic!

[Gostev]

Tom is right... I totally forgot about hardlinks. This is the best solution.

[joergr]

Guys,
using hardlinks is a great idea, will try that one. Thank you.
best regards,
Joerg

[joergr]

Good Lord. Screw me. While editing my new hard link script I just analyzed the structure of the directories and found out that the very latest vbk file has the same name under any circumstances. So when doing full backup even when a older full backup is still present and being kept by the retention policy it will rename the old full backup and the very latest has always exactly the same name (jobname.vbk).
So i just instructed be to backup these special files, just have to select one file for each job. And as these names are always the right namers it would appear my problem is solved

best regards,
Joerg

[Vitaliy S.]

Joerg,

Sometimes you just need to sleep on it in order to find the best solution. Nice one!