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pronto
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Outsourcing Backup Files

Post by pronto »

Hi Community,

we are using a Veeam Backup & Replication instance on our regular backup server running an instance of Retrospect. The Veeam backup repository reside on the same storage as the Retrospect repository does. Till now Retrospect is managing the tape library but we need a possibility for outsourcing out of date Veeam backups we don't need anymore but we don't want to delete finally. Is it possible to create a job in Retrospect which writes the related backup files from Veeam onto, with the possibility to restore them again to it's original destination if needed? Are there other recommendations how to deal with that issue?

Thx in advance & Bye Tom
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Re: Outsourcing Backup Files

Post by PTide »

Hi,
Is it possible to create a job in Retrospect which writes the related backup files from Veeam onto, with the possibility to restore them again to it's original destination if needed?
Not sure that I got it. Could you please elaborate on what exactly are you trying to achieve?

Thanks
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Re: Outsourcing Backup Files

Post by dellock6 »

Hi,
from the point of view of another backup software, Veeam backups are just files, so you can use retrspect (or any other solution) to send backup files to the tape with no issue. Curious, why not using Veeam also for the tape offloading?
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tdewin
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Re: Outsourcing Backup Files

Post by tdewin »

Those file can also be easily imported by using the import functionality or by adding/rescanning the repository where they are located at. All meta data for fast importing the chain is in those VBM files in the same directory as the backup itself
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Re: Outsourcing Backup Files

Post by pronto »

Servus Dellock6
dellock6 wrote:Hi,
from the point of view of another backup software, Veeam backups are just files, so you can use retrspect (or any other solution) to send backup files to the tape with no issue.
Thanks, this was what I want to hear ;-)
dellock6 wrote: Curious, why not using Veeam also for the tape offloading?
I guess that it is not a good idea to use a tape library or a tape drive with two seperate applications. We have quite a lot of servers we have to backup with a normal backup application because they are not virtualized. Internal we discuss the possibility to use a second tape drive in our tape library, one exclusive for Retrospect and the other exclusive for Veeam. But we are nit sure if this is workable.

Thx & Bye Tom
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Re: Outsourcing Backup Files

Post by pronto »

Servus Tdewin
tdewin wrote:Those file can also be easily imported by using the import functionality or by adding/rescanning the repository where they are located at. All meta data for fast importing the chain is in those VBM files in the same directory as the backup itself
Sounds great. Which files are necessary for that procedure? Both vbm and vbk files related to the affected backup? The vbm file alone is not enough because the vbk file is consuming the most disk space. After I transfered those files to tape, how should I proceed to get rid of those out dated backups? Simple delete the folder with the associated vbm and vbk files and/or delete the job in Veeams frontend from the job section?

Thx & Bye Tom
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Re: Outsourcing Backup Files

Post by foggy »

pronto wrote:Sounds great. Which files are necessary for that procedure? Both vbm and vbk files related to the affected backup? The vbm file alone is not enough because the vbk file is consuming the most disk space.
You need the entire backup chain to be able to restore from any restore point in it (VBK - full backup, VRB/VIB - incremental backup, VBM - metadata file).
pronto wrote:After I transfered those files to tape, how should I proceed to get rid of those out dated backups? Simple delete the folder with the associated vbm and vbk files and/or delete the job in Veeams frontend from the job section?
Veeam B&R job takes care of the backups falling out of the specified retention.
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Re: Outsourcing Backup Files

Post by pronto »

Servus Foggy,
foggy wrote:You need the entire backup chain to be able to restore from any restore point in it (VBK - full backup, VRB/VIB - incremental backup, VBM - metadata file).
Yes of course. I did not take incremental backups, so I was not aware about the incrementals ;-)
foggy wrote:Veeam B&R job takes care of the backups falling out of the specified retention.
And how? I figured out for example:

* Backup the necessary folder to anywhere; Delete Job from Disk (Backup & Replication -> Backups -> Disk -> Delete from disk, invoked from the context menu of the affected backup job); all done for export?

* To import the exported backup, copy the backuped folder from anywhere back into the repository (or any other repository managed by Veeam) and trigger a 'rescan repository' (Backup Infrastructure -> Backup Repositories -> Rescan Repository, invoked from the context menu of the affected repository)?

Would this be a proper way or do you have other recommendiations?

Thx & Bye Tom
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Re: Outsourcing Backup Files

Post by foggy »

I mean that when creating backup job, you specify retention policy, i.e. how many restore points you want to keep on disk. Once the specified number of restore points is exceeded, the earliest restore point in the chain will be automatically deleted.
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Re: Outsourcing Backup Files

Post by pronto »

Servus Foggy,

No this isn't my intention. For example we don't need a virtual guest anymore and we prepare it to delete it from our host system, we would like to create a backup for archive purposes first and then outsource this backup to a cheap medium, like a tape for example. The current situation, however, is that another backup software already accesses the tape drive. In order to be sure to avoid any concurrent access to the tape drive, we intent to transfer the backuped guest files, created by Veeam (VBK; VBM; no incrementals or differentials required for that intention) with the other backup software to tape. Our question is now, which files we exactly need to transfer in order to delete the guest VM from Veeams repository and what we have to do, if we need against expectation some files or finaly the complete outsourced machine back online.

Thx & Bye Tom
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Re: Outsourcing Backup Files

Post by dellock6 »

pronto wrote:I guess that it is not a good idea to use a tape library or a tape drive with two seperate applications. We have quite a lot of servers we have to backup with a normal backup application because they are not virtualized.
Tom, have you considered that we are also able now to protect physical workloads? We have both agents for windows and linux, and they can both send backups to a Veeam repository, and from here to tape.

Luca
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Re: Outsourcing Backup Files

Post by foggy »

Ok, then seems you've correctly considered using the 'Delete Job from Disk' and repository rescan commands for the use case described above.
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