Feature request - merging backup files

[mma]

Hello Veeam

Is it possible to change the "Merging backup files" process for backup copy jobs?

We have some huge jobs with a daily merging process of 2-5 hours. During this time it's not possible to start any restore session from this backups as there is a lock on it...
That's a long time to wait if you need to recover some files from it.

Is it possible to change this behaviour in a future release?

Regards
Marcel

[Shestakov]

Hello Marcel,
What is the size of increments in your case?
Merge process naturally locks backup files so you cannot restore. If you want to avoid merge, try Active Full Backup Copies.
Thanks!

[mma]

Hello Nikita

Incremental is 300 - 500 GB, the full is 5.5 TB.
I just changed to "per VM backup files", this should just lock the VMs in transformation, right?

How will an active full will help me in this case. Isn't this just a one time manual task?
BTW, we dont have GFS enabled, it is just on chain with 30 daily restore points.
We keep only 1 week of backups OnSite. So every backup older than 7 days is not accessible for up to 5 hours daily.

Regards
Marcel

[lando_uk]

When your Copy Job is merging, you can still restore from the Primary Job.

[mma]

When your Copy Job is merging, you can still restore from the Primary Job.

BTW, we dont have GFS enabled, it is just on chain with 30 daily restore points.
We keep only 1 week of backups OnSite. So every backup older than 7 days is not accessible for up to 5 hours daily.

[Shestakov]

I just changed to "per VM backup files", this should just lock the VMs in transformation, right?

"per VM backup files" setting doesn`t change the locking behavior.

How will an active full will help me in this case. Isn't this just a one time manual task?

With periodic active full backup files will not merge at all. Backup copy will have incremental chain rather than forever forward incremental chain. That`s not one time task.
Thanks!

[mma]

With periodic active full backup files will not merge at all. Backup copy will have incremental chain rather than forever forward incremental chain. That`s not one time task.

Tell me if I am wrong, but this is not possible for backup copy jobs.

[Shestakov]

With Read the entire restore point from source instead of synthesizing it from increments option in the backup copy job settings, Veeam Backup & Replication will copy data for the archive full backup from restore points on the source backup repository, transport it to the target backup repository over the network and write it to the archive full backup file.
If you schedule weekly full backups, the job will copy the backups from source rather than synthetically create them on target.

[mma]

We don't use GFS ond that backup copy job....
The problem is the daily merging after we reached our retention policy - not the synthesizing for GFS.

[edit]Ok, weekly fulls - I will test it.[/edit]

[Shestakov]

I`ve got it. My suggestion is that you can avoid merges with GFS retention. You need several full backups to make chain simple incremental. Otherwise merges will take place.
Set weekly GFS retention = 1 or 2 with monthly/quarterly/yearly = 0 not to spend lot of repository space.
Thanks!

[manfri]

Otherwise use a windows 2016 repository with REFS that, IMHO, must accelerate a lot the merge operation...