3GB added to incremental BU every day on idle computer

[Schly]

I'm just beginning with Veeam. I set up a backup for "entire computer".

First backup was 433GB. Great. Expected.

Additional backups each day are averaging 1GB to 3GB.

This computer is 99% idle. Mostly used for a brief internet query or to login to a vpn and RDP session.

Why are my incremental back ups so large? Is there a way to compare daily backups for changes?

Thanks in advance.

[Gostev]

This is normal. OS lives its own life doing a whole bunch of things in the background, which results in many disk content changes. Try Process Monitor from Sysinternals to see the number of writes happening every second on an idle machine, your mind will be blown

[Schly]

That's really kind of unsustainable for an incremental backup. I mean 1 to 3GB a day is a bit under a TB/year just in incremental B/U's.

Is there any way to modify the backup to avoid this or is the solution to choose a file backup only?

[HannesK]

Hello,
well, a change to Linux would result in less "idle changes". Maybe that's an option?

I would never recommend file backup copy. Because that has the side effect that the backup is file based now instead of block based. That means if you change 1KB of a 100MB file, the full 100 MB must be backed up again. Chances are high that this would result in even larger incremental backups.

I tend to go with keep it stupid simple (KISS): how much does it cost to purchase a 1TB disk and how much does it cost to fine tune something that is working as designed?

Best regards,
Hannes

[Schly]

It’s ok for a local backup, I suppose, but I have a quote for a small business with five servers that will be backing up to the cloud.

I also have a quote from a competitor. Not sure if it’s ok to post that name here, so I won’t.

But if I do similar backups with a 7 year retention policy, that gets significantly more expensive than I originally calculated over time for cloud backups.

[HannesK]

the competition also needs to back up all changes if you configure "entire computer". so that does not change anything from my point of view

most people do not store daily backups for 7 years... they do GFS (weekly / monthly / yearly)... but yes, with 2555 restore points it's a significant difference... agree.

so the question for me is not the quote as in pricing, but it would be interesting how much backup space they need every day. then you could tune some % by increasing the compression rate and "buy" that with higher CPU load.

[Schly]

That makes the most sense. I can run a single, full backup and increment it annually, keep them 7 years. That would be one large backup and six moderate incemental backups. Then I can sprinkle in Monthly, weekly and daily backup with much smaller retention times.

[Moopere]

> I can run a single, full backup and increment it annually, keep them 7 years. That would be one large backup and six moderate incemental backups.

If I'm reading this comment correctly you are thinking about doing a single full backup and then relying upon a yearly incremental to capture changes year on year?

If thats correct I'd be extremely cautious. Remember that incremental backups require not only an intact full but also all the interval incrementals in order to successfully restore. So, by year 7, you are going to need to rely upon the original full, now 7 years old + all 6 previous yearly incrementals. If anything goes wrong with any of these backups then you're fried.

Myself, I'd be going for yearly fulls, with at least two copies on different media (and if possible 2 different types of media ... disk + tape?).

The same fears go with the original proposition. Daily incrementals based off a single Full over a period of 7 years. That is an incredibly long backup chain and is inviting disaster over the long term as a single incremental failure in that long chain will fail the entire restore.

[Schly]

Yes, you’re right. I said that wrong. I meant do a full backup each year, and do incrementals on weekly and possibly on monthly backups on a quarterly rotation.

[Egor Yakovlev]

- If you are using desktop OS, like Win10, I'd suggest disabling unnecessary services to reduce changes footprint. Windows is known for having a swarm of services you might never use but that are under Automatic startup running live on every system. There are dozens guides online how to reduce windows OS footprint and service count.
- If you are on server OS, I'd suggest switching from Desktop to Windows Core experience, which will have a huge list of benefits for your machine - more resources available, faster boot times, less patches and potential security breaches so on.
/Cheers!

[kokishin]

Hi Egor,

Sounds like good advice.

Any specific unnecessary Win 10 services you'd recommend disabling or at least looking into?

[Egor Yakovlev]

Can't recommend to disable any, being a non-Microsoft representative. Depending on how you use your machine, it might be worth disabling stuff you don't ever need - for example bluetooth, ipv6-related services, diagnostics \ tracking \ reporting services, swarm of laptop-vendor-specific services("smart" managers, optimizers, boosters etc), x-box gaming services etc. For Win2016 Microsoft has great overview with details on each service and suggestion "Do-don't-should be disabled", which also aligns with some W10 services alongside. You can use it as official base for research.
/Thanks!