Seeding a backup copy with a backup copy?

[wa15]

I need to enable encryption on my backup copy jobs. However, they are all over the WAN and doing an active full to make encryption take effect would take weeks.

Can I create a new backup copy job (on the main server that's receiving all these backup copies), source it to the repository that consists of the unencrypted backup copy files (which is on this server), enable encryption on this new job and copy it that way so that the traffic is all local? I hope the question made sense.

This is an AHV backup copy if that makes a difference.

[DGrinev]

Hi,

Yes, you can do that.

Please keep in mind the source repository cannot be used as a target by the copy job.
You should create another repository that can reside on the same volume.

You should get an encrypted backup file for seeding without using WAN. Thanks!

[ejenner]

I'm not sure from your description what way you're planning to do it. But if you copy the entire contents of a backup job folder off a repository.. to another repository... provided the folder path is the same (on a different repository) you can change the repository setting in the backup job after the files have been moved and it will check to see if the files have the necessary integrity before allowing you to complete the change.

So set your copy jobs to a temporary local repository. When you're satisfied you have sufficient amount of data on the disk (full file + 1 or 2 increments) you can transport the physical disk to your remote location and copy the job off onto your remote repository. Change the repository setting in the job and you should be golden. Obviously you'd disable the job while the data is in transit.

[DGrinev]

I forgot to mention that the old backup chain won't be deleted by retention after the mapping process.
You should remove it manually later. Thanks!

[wa15]

Thanks guys. This worked nicely for vSphere backups but it is not working for AHV backup copies. Veeam wants to pull the data from the source backup repository over the WAN even if I select the local backup copy repository as the source. Can anyone confirm?

[DGrinev]

Do you have two repositories (first, second) at the Main site and at least one proxy server, right?
You instruct a new backup copy job to use the first repository as the source, the second one as the target?

Thanks!

[wa15]

That is correct. With first repository at the main site containing the (unencrypted) backup copy files from the main backup copy job. Worked great for vSphere but not for AHV.

[DGrinev]

I am a bit confused by the phrase: "... from the main backup job."
It makes me think the source for the job wasn't the repository but backup copy job.
There are three options to choose from: From infrastructure, From backup, From jobs.
You should choose from backup, also pick a particular backup repository.

Thanks!

[wa15]

Thanks Dmitry. When creating a backup copy job for AHV, there is no 3 options Clicking "Add" simply brings up the AHV backup jobs in question. So I selected the backup job in question and selected a particular repository as you noted. However, the backup copy job tries to pull the data from the source repository across the WAN, unlike the vSphere backup copy.

[DGrinev]

Hey,

I had a brief discussion about the issue with the AHV team. They took a break to check the said behavior since it looks like a bug.
I will update this thread as soon as I get any results.

Thank you!

[wa15]

Thanks Dmitry! I'll be following this thread.

[DGrinev]

Hi,

It is a bug.
I just received confirmation from the QA team. Will be fixed in the next version of the product.

Good catch! Thank you!

[wa15]

Good to know! Any rough ETA on a fix by any chance? Are we looking at a month or two? And I assume there is no way I could contact support for a hotfix, is there?

[wa15]

Following up on this, now that we have updated to V10 and AHV v2, the same behavior exists. Any ideas how to resolve this?

[Kochkin]

The bug described above is related to repository exclusions.

For now, there is no way to seed ahv backup copy on backup copy. Only ahv backup jobs can be specified as a source.

[wa15]

That's disappointing. I was holding off on copying 10 TBs+ over WAN for a couple of months, hoping for this fix to allow us to avoid copying that data over WAN. I would have started copying it had I known this wouldn't be fixed.