Best practices

[raajah]

I installed the free Veeam Backup for AWS. no issues.

I am able to run snapshots and backup.

My question is, what are best practices to run both? Snapshots is straight forward by itself, but what about backups?

If I create one job, it has both snapshots and backup in it, plus when doing a backup, it does snapshots as well.

So how do most people have theirs configured if say I want to do snapshots every 12 hours with 14 save points, plus have longer backup retention?

seems like when both are configured within the same job they conflict each other.

any suggestions?

[dalbertson]

Hi,

Its important to understand that the EBS snapshots used during a backup operation are only kept until the backup job is complete. There is a good explanation of what each process does located here

https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/vbaws ... tml?ver=10

As far as best practice for job settings, my answer would be what are the RTO/RPO demands? With that knowledge you could then design a strategy to meet those requirments as well as any potential budget constraints.

Most customers i have worked with have kept their backup and snapshots in one policy. You would need to think of them as two separate processes and not like a backup copy in the on prem product (VBR).

You could keep your snapshots for a shorter period of time and then use backup for longer term archival. One great benefit of using the backup portion is that we convert data to a Veeam format.

[raajah]

it appears the snapshots are taking a little over 12hours. If I set the backup options also in the policy, I think it is overlapping the snapshot process so it gives errors. How do I configure if I want to keep snapshots for 2 weeks as well as make backups up to 2 months, so that I can always restore from a snapshot or backup within a 2 month period?

[dalbertson]

Can you tell me what errors you are seeing?

Snapshots and backups running at the same time should not be an issue. If you do want to separate them for other reasons then you can just set the schedule for snapshot and backups to have different start times.

But i repeat that i doubt the issue you are seeing is related to snapshots and backups running at the same time.

[raajah]

If I want to be able to restore a server or individual file up to 2 months retention, what settings in snapshots and backups should I pick? Right now snapshots are taking a little over 12 hours. Currently I have no error with snapshots enabled only. Can you tell me your recommendations for the settings for 2 month retention for restoring entire server or individual file on any given day.

[nielsengelen]

Are you sure Snapshots are taking 12 hours? Or are you talking about the total policy?

If you want 2 months retention, you should back up the server to S3. Snapshots are made for short term retention and quick recovery.