Full daily tape backup - incremental to disk?

[bucoops]

Hi All,

Firstly I apologise - I am fully aware that I should read the manual! But my issue is I'm in at the deep end trying to get over ASAP from backup exec so am asking for confirmation of what I *think* I need to do. And I have been reading the manual

Currently we're in a mess. Daily partial data backup to portable disk, with a MONTHLY full backup to NAS. No retention of the dailies past 1 week so we would have to restore from the monthly and then use the most recent daily to bring us back up to date in a total loss - with a hope that nothing was lost in the gap from the monthly to the most recent daily... I've not been involved in setting up a backup regime before.

What I am hoping to do with VB&R is a full to disk once a week (Sunday), then incrementals each night Mon-Sat. What I would then like to be able to do is to write a FULL backup to tape on our new library each night to give a one tape restore to the latest full backup. The backup to tape job is happily copying the weekly full. What I can't figure out is how to create a virtual full backup for the incrementals. From what I've read the virtual full is only created as part of a forever incremental - and I need to use synthetic full - but the disk space requirements for that are huge? And we need space free to copy the content of an archive tape if need be. We'd like to retain a full week of restore points on the disk repository as one full, 6 incrementals for ease of use with the tapes for DR.

Have I missed something? Can I do what I require? Thank you

[bucoops]

Looks like GFS daily is what I need?

[Dima P.]

Hi bucoops,

What I can't figure out is how to create a virtual full backup for the incrementals. From what I've read the virtual full is only created as part of a forever incremental - and I need to use synthetic full - but the disk space requirements for that are huge?

Synthesized full on tape is created from forever incremental backup chain - that’s true. Active full or synthetics for disk job is not required (move over it will turn off the synthetics on tape). You can schedule the synthesized full backup creation in tape job options

Looks like GFS daily is what I need?

Tape GFS is used to backup full backup to tape according to the defined schedule of the GFS tape jobs (it works for all type of source backup jobs i.e. forever incremental, incremental or reverse incremental). It has four separate media sets with it’s own retention

[bucoops]

Hi, thanks for your reply - if you're referring to this section:



It states it's for backup methods which don't periodically produce a full back - so forever incremental? It's how I had it set originally to test (so backup job creates one full and 6 incrementals per week) and I ended up with 1 tape run per week and 6 "No new files to backup per job settings" as it only sees the incrementals?

I'm aware GFS has the 4 sets - I and others it would seem, require daily to be added to the sets.

thanks

[Dima P.]

it's for backup methods which don't periodically produce a full back - so forever incremental?

Correct.

ended up with 1 tape run per week and 6 "No new files to backup per job settings" as it only sees the incrementals?

It depends how full/incremental backup was configured in the backup to tape job. Check the corresponding steps in the tape job wizard – incremental backup could be disabled.

[bucoops]

I'm afraid you've lost me. I don't want to backup the incrementals to tape, I want to backup a full version each night to tape that is created from the most recent full d2d and then incorporating any incremental d2d since. Is this possible?

thanks

[Dima P.]

In order to do that you source backup job should run in forever incremental state (without periodic fulls or synthetics). Then you need to schedule tape job to run every day and check all days in synthesized full backup schedule. To make sure that you backup most recent full (or create a synthesize full backup on tape from most recent incremental restore point only) – you can use Process latest full backup chain only option.

[veremin]

Alternatively you can switch source backup job to reversed incremental mode and let a tape job archive only the latest full backup. It's worth sticking to this approach only if a target repository (a backup job is pointed to) can handle reversed incremental activity well - it's not underprovisioned in terms of IOps, in other words. Thanks.

[bucoops]

Thank you. The repository uses 4x 6TB 5200 RPM drives so I don't think reverse incremental would work very well?

Does the tape job need to be on the same day as the backup job? I made the changes yesterday and set it to go, then ran the tape job - worked fine. Then the backup job auto-ran at 23:00 last night and the tape job this morning, but the tape job says no new files to backup per job settings?

Thanks for your patience with me - backup beyond windows server backup is new to me, I have backup exec, and I'm totally new to tape and Veeam!

[bucoops]

Thought I was getting somewhere - 3 days in a row it did an incremental to disk and the tape job turned that into a full.

Except yesterday the incremental worked fine, but the tape job says no new files to back up per job settings.

As Penelope Pitstop once said, "Haylp!"

[bucoops]

I hesitate to say it, but I *think* it's working - up to 5 days in a row now. I had to move the D2D to midnight - so it seems my query above was correct that the tape job has to be on the same day as the disk job. Mildly irritating as it reduces the available times to run maintenance - the company has people working 05:30-22:00 daily which makes things interesting.