Merge only

[RaymondV]

Hi,

Is there a way to force a 'merge only' on a backup job? We want to decrease the number of restore points without backing up the VM's first.

Regards,
Raymond

[DGrinev]

Hi Raymond,

There is no way to initiate restore point merge.
The retention policy applies at the end of the successful job run, so you need space for the job to finish.
However, you can remove some restore points manually depending on your backup method forward incremental\reverse, it's not recommended approach, but possible of there is no other option.
Please clarify more details about the backup jobs. Thanks!

[RaymondV]

We don't have space issues, but would to do a 'merge only' after a successful tape out job. Before the tape out, we change the number of restore points of our forever forward incremental backups from 35 to 50. If we don't change the number, the tape out would fail because the vbk file changes during the tape job. After a successful tape out, we want to change the number of restore points back. Since merging can be a very lenghty process, we want to do this gradually and during the day without triggering any VMware snapshotting and impacting production storage performance.

Regards,
Raymond

[BartP]

You are looking for a feature to overcome a problem you have with the Tape.
Instead of addressing this issue, you are now looking for a workaround.

If we don't change the number, the tape out would fail because the vbk file changes during the tape job
How long does your Tape Job take to run, if i may ask?
It could be that a change from Forever Forward, to Weekly Fulls can be a good solution; since no merge actions (or VBK changes) will happen for a week (or longer).

[RaymondV]

Hi Bart,

I never mentioned this to be an issue or a problem, but being able to perform a 'merge only' job would make things easier/more convenient for us. We have a policy to have at least 35 restore points on disk, changing to weekly fulls would mean a lot more extra disk storage for us to buy because of all the extra TB's for the full backups.
The tape job now runs 10+ days and I am thinking of splitting it into smaller jobs with post-exection scripts to set the number of restore points back to 35 immediately after all the files in the job are written to tape.

Regards,
Raymond

[foggy]

Hi Raymond, in your current scenario using scripts to temporarily change the retention value looks like the easiest workaround.

[BartP]

Hey Raymond,

I know you don't mention it as a problem/issue, but think of it like this: If you would -not- do anything about retention/job settings and manually altering within Veeam, would you have working backups or not?
From what i could read, the tape backups would fail. Therefore my conclusion is that you do have, some sort of, issue going on. Even if it only is a compliance disruption, which could be none of your concern.

I'm with foggy, that the easiest workaround is the use of scripts.
I also do think that you can work towards a solution, you should take a second time at the bigger picture (Tape Backup / Library capacity / Backup infra / etc) and work from there.