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rjv1971
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Backup Retention GFS in V10

Post by rjv1971 »

In V10... I can set retention/gfs in the backup job itself, like this:
https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backu ... ml?ver=100

Then as in older versions, I can set it in the backup copy job, like this:
https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backu ... ml?ver=100

What is the difference between the 2?
wishr
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Re: Backup Retention GFS in V10

Post by wishr »

Hi Ron,

In addition to the existing GFS retention in backup copy jobs, v10 has introduced GFS retention for backup jobs, so now you can achieve a GFS retention scheme without the need to create backup copy jobs.

Please let me know if I answered your question. Thanks.
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Re: Backup Retention GFS in V10

Post by rjv1971 »

So there's no difference in setting it in one job or another?
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Re: Backup Retention GFS in V10

Post by wishr »

The approach to retention mostly depends on your goals. Some users may want to keep the backup retention simple while archiving GFS restore points at an offsite location in order to be compliant with 3-2-1 rule that implies having at least three copies of your data, storing the copies on two different media and keeping one backup copy offsite.
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Re: Backup Retention GFS in V10

Post by rjv1971 »

So the difference then would be: GFS in the backup job would be: All d/W/m/Y backups are in the same location while with a backup copy job I will follow the 3-2-1 rule?
Gostev
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Re: Backup Retention GFS in V10

Post by Gostev » 1 person likes this post

Correct.
florian.meier
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Re: Backup Retention GFS in V10

Post by florian.meier »

Is the v10 GFS Retention also possible with REFS Fastclone? For example 7 days syntetic full refs backups, 4 weekly new GFS feature on refs fastcloned backups and 12 monthly new GFS feature refs backups?
Thank you
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Re: Backup Retention GFS in V10

Post by veremin »

Correct. FastClone works for GFS backups as well. Thanks!
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Re: Backup Retention GFS in V10

Post by Gostev » 1 person likes this post

Saying that "FastClone works for GFS backups as well" makes it sound like GFS backup is some special type of backup, so I wanted to correct this to avoid wrong impressions - or reading between the lines.

It is important to understand that GFS backups are nothing but absolutely standard full backups, just marked accordingly for the retention policy. When you set up the GFS schedule in the backup job, you will see that it operates solely based on the regular periodic full backups already created by the job. In other words, GFS schedule will never create its "own" special full backup - it will always wait for the job to create a regular periodic full.

Literally the only difference is that GFS full backup file metadata additionally indicates its GFS generation, which is used by the retention processing logic. Thus, GFS fulls should not be treated as some special "out of band" things which may not have certain features of regular periodic full backups: they ARE absolutely regular periodic full backups :D
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Re: Backup Retention GFS in V10

Post by backupquestions »

If I have an existing job which already takes synthetic fulls, and I update to v10 and then I want to enable GFS in this job, do I need to take a new active full for all data, or can I just enable gfs and the normal synthetic fulls will continue and GFS will start working?

If you need to take an active full and don't have space on the repo for an entire 2nd active full for everything, then I guess the only choice is delete all the local backups and rely on your backup copy jobs which may have similar retention in the event that you need to restore something older, and then just move forward with the new chain?

I'm really hoping it doesn't need a new active full but expecting so...
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Re: Backup Retention GFS in V10

Post by Gostev »

No, actually I don't see any reason why enabling the GFS option would require an active full. Once you enable GFS, the following synthetic full backups will be considered by the job as GFS candidates, and those matching the GFS schedule will be flagged accordingly. That's basically the only behavior change, so I really don't see why an active full would be needed.
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Re: Backup Retention GFS in V10

Post by backupquestions »

That is very good news. Thank you Gostev!
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Re: Backup Retention GFS in V10

Post by torteflo »

Hi,

Maybe I will be a troublemaker here.. because I see another answer to the first question, which is a little general drawback for Veeam IMHO

The difference between the GFS options in Backup Jobs in v10 and in Backup Copy Jobs in general, is that you have less options!
You don't have the "day of month" option in v10 on Backup Jobs
Also it don't seems to bother lot of people..

But for one of my customer I encounter this very need, monthly GFS, without any day or hour blank between monthly GFS (for ex each 1st of month, or each 2nd or whatever)
Not the first saturday or sunday of month, which is the default, and will be the 2th in may and the 6th in april, that's not precisely monthly is it ?

I thought I could use this new backup job GFS feature, because we have some TB with ReFS repositories and creating GFS in Backup Copy "cost" us another active full, but no

And I think I understand well why this "day of month" can be on Backup Copy and cannot be on Backup Jobs
This is by design and due to the backup method Forward Incremental for GFS in Backup Job and roughly as Forever Incremental for Backup Copy Jobs

And I saw that as a litlle general drawback because even for backup copy, day of month is not the default and will have a "cost", AFAIK keeping 2 full in a week for some time

Also I may be wrong somewhere here, please tell me
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Re: Backup Retention GFS in V10

Post by foggy »

What kind of "cost" do you mean here? Backups to a ReFS repository should be spaceless thanks to FastClone.
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Re: Backup Retention GFS in V10

Post by torteflo »

Well, maybe I lack some explanations as you cannot guess my example
This customer have 2 sites and on each site he has :
- Backup Job on ReFS with small retention (31 days)
- then Backup Copy with GFS, on ReFS too

So we have 2 ReFS backup chain, taking 2 "real" FULL on disk, and then mostly increments thanks to FastClone
I thought I could only have a backup Job with GFS, so we would have only one Chain, so only 1 "real" full on disk to gain space

Also this configuration and my customer needs are specific, I don't find it extreme (GFS retention with 1st day of month)

Hope its clearer, if not tell me
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Re: Backup Retention GFS in V10

Post by wishr » 1 person likes this post

Hello Torteflo,

The main goal of the copy job here is to have two fully recoverable copies of your data in two different locations (3-2-1 rule), so in case if the primary site goes down you still have an option to restore and run your apps and services.

Since your copy jobs have been created in order to provide GFS output (please confirm), I would rethink the approach and create a backup job with GFS retention at each location, then create a backup copy job to copy the data to an alternative location, or use Capacity Tier of SOBR in order to satisfy 3-2-1 rule by offloading backups to Object Storage.

Thanks
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Re: Backup Retention GFS in V10

Post by torteflo »

Hello,

yes I know about backup copy purpose and 3-2-1, which is a good rule but oftenly we do what we can with what we have ;-)
You're right but in this case :
- first there was Backup copy crossed between the 2 Production Sites
- and now there is in fact a 3rd (DR) site with new backup copy jobs, which should be created in the really next months

So again the options (and the whole process) lacks for this precise case a first day of month option
In my case I will do GFS but keep a lot more full than needed (lot of weekly instead of a few monthly)
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Re: Backup Retention GFS in V10

Post by wishr »

Hi Torteflo,

Could you please clarify in detail what exactly is missing and how it correlates with your use-case scenario?

Thanks
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Re: Backup Retention GFS in V10

Post by torteflo » 1 person likes this post

Hi Fedor,

Okay :-)

what I say is for my precise case
A customer of mine need to have 1 year retention with monthly granurality
But he really cannot afford to loose any hour/minutes/seconds of data
So right now we have backup copy jobs with GFS 12 months, first day of month (and not the default option first week of month)
And we want to suppress these existing backup copy jobs, because we'll have another site as a target for new backup copy jobs.
But still we want to keep GFS locally, inside the backup jobs, as Veeam 10 can do.
And that is not possible with our needs, as GFS in backup job in Veeam 10 lacks the "first day of month feature", and this is by design, you won't add it as a product improvement in a few months I think.
Other choice to use GFS inside backup jobs would be to change GFS policy to 52 weekly, instead of 12 monthly, but it need more space on repo
I hope it's clarifying something !
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Re: Backup Retention GFS in V10

Post by foggy »

If the full is actually created on the first day of the month then it will be used as a GFS one even with the 'first week' setting.
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Re: Backup Retention GFS in V10

Post by torteflo »

Hi,
sorry didn't check this thread for a while..
I suppose you speak of the full backup of the backup job in v10
Well, with synthetic full if i remember correctly you can only tell Veeam the day of week
But yes, when for example the synthetic full on each saturday is the 1st of month it will be used for GFS
But that will be not quite often
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Re: Backup Retention GFS in V10

Post by rubeng »

Gostev wrote: Apr 27, 2020 7:58 pm No, actually I don't see any reason why enabling the GFS option would require an active full. Once you enable GFS, the following synthetic full backups will be considered by the job as GFS candidates, and those matching the GFS schedule will be flagged accordingly. That's basically the only behavior change, so I really don't see why an active full would be needed.
Hi,

We are in a similar situation. We have a Synthetic Full Backup job with 180+ restore points, prior to v10. I want to enable GFS on this job, and decrease the amount of restore points in the job. If I enable GFS and choose Keep 1 yearly, and maybe Keep monthly backups for 12 Months, will it use the existing restore points for this? Or will it retain the next synthetic full backup for yearly and monthly GFS retention?

If it's only using the following Synthetic Full backups for GFS, I will have to keep the 180+ restore points in 1 year until the GFS meets the retention we want, correct?
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Re: Backup Retention GFS in V10

Post by Gostev »

That is correct.
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