Best configuration - Tape Backup GFS

[StephanG]

Hi everyone,

i am using Veeam with Tape Backup for quite some time now. But it seems i do not really "get" it.
I have 4 Backup Jobs with Hyper-V VMs that start every day "off business hours" and create a synthetic full on friday.

I want to save the files as soon as possible to tape - so i scheduled the tape backup at 11:30 pm where normally a daily incremental backup is done.
But for the week backups this is to early - and there is no backup file found or something else is interrupting the backup.
Also the month backup is not really catching the files

Shouldn't the tape job create the synthetic full - or wait for the sync job to stop?

Best regards
Stephan

[Dima P.]

Hello Stephan,

But for the week backups this is to early - and there is no backup file found or something else is interrupting the backup.

GFS tape job will await for a new backup file to appear and then it create a weekly full from it. In case of a full backup on disk - tape job stores it as is. In case of incremental - tape job creates a synthetic full backup.

Also the month backup is not really catching the files

Same logic as with weekly - as soon as you have a new restore point for the set day it should be used as a monthly restore point for tape.

This How GFS Backup to Tape Works explains the logic behind the GFS tape job. Let us know if you have any questions! Cheers!

[StephanG]

Hi Dima,
thanks for your response.
I have 2 backup jobs that have about 6 TB in size - creating a synthetic full backup takes about 15h of time. Then the tape job lasts about 14h - new backups created in this time - causing the tape job to start over.
My aim is to get the backups as fast as possible on tape - so is the setting
Daily backup job (with no "synthetic full" set) - then tape job GFS that starts right after the finish of the first daily backup job with setting "prevent this job from being interrupted" ?

Yesterday the GFS job did not even start - no log entry what so ever.

[StephanG]

And again - the Job does not start
https://pasteboard.co/J2F0nHJ.png

Setup
https://pasteboard.co/J2F0wSo.png

So what i am doing wrong here? The daily job is reaching into the next day. Is that an issue?

[Dima P.]

Stephan,

Thank you for the updates! Are you running v10? If yes, can you please confirm that you have installed Veeam Backup & Replication 10 Cumulative Patch 1 - there is one particular fix that addresses the synthesized full backup creation issue.

[StephanG]

Installed already today. If it does not work i will open up a support case.

[Dima P.]

Stephan,

Thanks for the heads up - let me know how it goes!

[StephanG]

Support case: 04122036
It did not start the weekly backup at friday and then hang for 3 days at a daily tape backup. Stopped it yesterday and saw today that it did not run yesterday evening.
Maybe i just use the windows task manager to start the backup - so i can schedule better with more options.

[Dima P.]

Sorry to hear that you are still having issues. Thanks for the case, will discuss it with RnD folks.

[StephanG]

Thanks. The case is still being worked on.
I also don't get why my backups are creating a "full backup file merge" every day. Although i did not set that. For some backups that lasts for 9h. And then the tape backup does not find the backup from "today" and asks for retry.
Is the full backup file merge is triggered by the tape backup? The Veeam support was not sure.


At the moment i miss almost every day my backup window.

I just want to: Backup all my machines - in this time start the tape backup - grab what's already done and then finish backup after the "disk backups" are done.

[Dima P.]

Is the full backup file merge is triggered by the tape backup? The Veeam support was not sure.

Thanks for sharing the update. Tape job must not affect primary job processing. Please keep working with our support team, as debug log analysis is required and let us know how it goes. Cheers!

[StephanG]

Hey,

i decided to go with "take latest backup available" and start at a date where normally all backup jobs are done.
We could not really find the issue - maybe the files were locked somehow.

The full backup merge was another problem - after doing an "active full backup" of all backup jobs - the behaviour was gone.

Best regards
Stephan

[Dima P.]

Hello Stephan,

Thank you for sharing the update. Glad to hear that your are up and running!

[StephanG]

Hi Dima,

it goes back and forth .. today i installed v11 before troubleshooting tapes again.

The daily tape job did not start - so i restarted it.
But although i set "take latest backup available" it did only backup the one from "this day". Is there any filter that has [Today] in it?


Backup

[Dima P.]

Hello Stephan,

Daily backup picks up what you have on disk for the set date to fill the gap between weekly full backup and previously created incrementals.

Weekly media set keeps only the full backup for the set date (i.e. no other restore points are taped out) while daily writes all you have between such weekly fulls, as otherwise incrementals backup chain looses it's consistency. Say, you have weekly backup set to run every Sunday with daily backups enabled, and you disabled the job in the middle of the week:

---
Sunday: Weekly full is synthesize full backup from the available restore point on disk if it's incremental or takes the full as is if it's present. Latest restore point is always used if you have multiple.
Monday: Daily backup process available incremental restore points from disk
Result: You have Weekly full + Monday incremental on tape
---
Tuesday: You disable tape job on Tuesday
Result: Disk jobs created incrementals but tape job did not get those to daily media set
---
Wednesday: Disk job created new incrementals for Wednesday and you enabled tape job back
Result: Tape job writes all incrementals from Tuesday and Wednesday to daily media set. The deal is - if tape job does not process all incrementals from Tuesday, taping out Wednesday incrementals is useless (to restore from incremental backup you need entire backup chain to be available).

Hope it makes sense!

P.S. Processing rate looks good, mind me asking what LTO generation was that?