Transform previous full back chains into rollbacks

[walkindakat]

We are currently trying to set up Veeam so it will backup to disk then tape.

We currently have Incremental backup turned on for 6 days of the week with Enable Synthetic fulls turned on for the 7th day

Do we need to have Transform previous full back chains into rollbacks ticked. I've read the User Guide and I'm just confused as to whether this would be better for us and unsure how restores would work in this scenario.

Would anyone be able to explain this to me!!

Thanks

[Vitaliy S.]

Hello Rhian,

This option transforms all previous full backup chains to the reversed incremental backup sequence, meaning that all your VIBs will be converted to VRBs, leaving you with a single VBK file. This is recommended when you do not have enough storage space to store traditional incremental backups chain with multiple full backups.

With transform enabled, we are able to remove older restore points immediately as they go away according to retention. Whereas with regular incremental without transform, we cannot remove individual restore points (only whole full backup chain at once, when latest incremental backup in this chain is no longer need for restore according to retention policy).

As for the restore process then it is pretty simple, if you choose to restore from a restore point which is represented with VRB file then first of all we'll take the existing VBK file (main file) and apply all the changes from selected VRB and then perform a restore. This is how it works behind the scene.

There is no need to enable transform unless you want to save some space on destination backup storage.

Hope this help.

[walkindakat]

Thanks very much for the explanation.

Would you only then tick Transform at some point if you thought you needed to save some space if you were running Incremental and Synthetic Fulls or would you have this ticked from the start

Otherwise you may as well run Reversed Incrementals????

[Gostev]

Generally speaking, you do not want to enable transform in the midst of regular incremental job, because first transformation may take too much time (a few days in some cases) depending on how many previous incremental chains it would have to process.

There are some differences between running Incremental+Transform vs. Reversed Incremental, each has their own pros and cons, and they are captured in sticky FAQ topic (see Excel sheet with backup modes comparison).

Thanks.