Host-based backup of Microsoft Hyper-V VMs.
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badams
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Types of backups

Post by badams »

I have been trying to get this answer for a few days, and it is holding up my setup. When you get to the schedule page of a backup, it will give you four options. Maybe three depending on how I am understanding. I am not sure I understand them all, NOR do I get which one is the best to go with. In the user guides, Veeam doesn't really spell out that this type or that type will work better than another.

So, the four I am thinking about is Reverse incremental, Incremental (Forever forward) and (Create synthetic), and Active full backup.

-- Reverse incremental seems cool as it seems to leave you with one full backup at the latest point.
-- Forward forever which seems to be the default and best way to back up. What makes this FF is that you don't use the synthetic backup or the Active full backup.

So, I am testing, and I am using hourly backups to see what it is doing. With forever forward, I am getting (every hour):

Full backup
Incremental 1
Incremental 2
Incremental 3
......
Incremental 14

Then the next incremental would replace the oldest. Obviously incremental #1 would be the oldest and 14 would be the newest. If Veeam replaces #14, it would keep the chain going, but after a month, incremental 14 would be completely up to date, but since it is not a differential, it would rely on incrementals which may be one or more months old. Or does it replace #1, then the next replace #2, which would give you full backups when you add the incremental.

Just seems that using the Create active weekly, would be safer if you added to the FF. But, Veeam makes it sound as though you would then not be using FF. And, if you schedule Active full, would the new incrementals work with it. It just seems in an important production environment, going an entire month with added incrementals before you get to a new Full would be risky. Maybe these incrementals are much better than I am used to. Of course, there is the synthetic option and the reverse option. But, Veeam just tells you these options are available and does not seem to go into much detail as to which is best for any given situation.
badams
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Re: Types of backups

Post by badams »

I am rather sure I figured it out. The oldest incremental gets merged into the full backup. That makes sense.
Mike Resseler
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Re: Types of backups

Post by Mike Resseler »

Hi Bert,

Yes. The oldest incremental gets merged into the full backup. I personally prefer to work with FF but use a synthetic active full from time to time (I do it weekly at this moment at my lab). This is to be able to recover faster, but also to avoid the risk that I can't restore when an incremental dies (I do use surebackup for testing but still)

Hope it makes sense
Mike
badams
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Re: Types of backups

Post by badams »

Yes, that was what I was thinking. In the user guide, it made it sound as though Forever Forward was only truly Forever Forward if you didn't do the synthetic or the Active Full. As forever forward seems to be the "cool" one to do, I was wanting to do that. One of the reasons I never did incremental with Backup Assist and Acronis is I worried about an incremental "dying" or "becoming corrupt." The synthetic seems the best of both worlds. I think maybe some companies may do forever forward for a month before an Active Full. That just seems too long. Of course, I am doing the rotating backups as well.

It's a little difficult in "my lab" meaning I haven't gone into production yet, given the very small VMs right now. So, the backups are so fast, it doesn't give me the true picture of what a full backup would run. Also, the incrementals on Veeam seem more stable than those on the other backup software.

Especially Shadow Protect! Yuk!
Mike Resseler
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Re: Types of backups

Post by Mike Resseler »

One of the items I would like into is using ReFS on your backup repository. At least if you can wait a little longer (a few weeks) before going into production. The advantage of ReFS on your repository is that we can do metadata moves when doing synthetic fulls which means those can go pretty fast and not much IO is needed to do this merge activity. The reason I say a few weeks is because the update for WS2016 (LTSC version) will get a necessary patch within 2 weeks. This (MFST) patch fixes issues with larger ReFS volumes locking up.
badams
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Re: Types of backups

Post by badams »

That's interesting as I redid my backup drive (10TBs) took a long time to change to ReFS. I guess it still needs a patch? Do I need to redo the two VMs and the host? They are all 2016.
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Re: Types of backups

Post by Mike Resseler »

Bert,

MSFT released a good patch a few weeks ago, but took it back away because it caused other (non-related to ReFS). You will see a line item to ReFS here: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4077525.

I am not aware that it got now into the March update. (And I can't test at this moment).

Considering the 10 TB size, you can start now because the issue arises with ReFS implementations that are much bigger, but I do hope you formatted it with 64 and not with 4k
badams
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Re: Types of backups

Post by badams »

I formatted with NTFS. Then, realizing I made a mistake, I reformatted with ReFS. I formatted with 4K. Then after realizing a made a mistake, I reformatted with 64K. So, I ended up with a 64K ReFS. You can see why I am not in production yet, lol.
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