Best way to backup. Require Full every 6 weeks.

[tri_94]

Hi there

I've been tasked with sorting our backups out and unless I'm missing something it doesn't seem a straight forward way of doing what I require.
Just wondering if anyone can tell me the best way to achieve the following:

Daily backups for 14 days (including 2 Fulls). (dont need keeping long term)
Full backups every 6 weeks (these need keeping long term)
and Incremental backup every week (these need keeping long term)

Also would like to know how I can move data to tape once the data is older then 6 months but only backup the older backups.

Many thanks

[Egor Yakovlev]

Hi Nick.
What kind of storage you are planning to use for Long Term backups? Will it be the same as short term chain or a dedicated cost-saving secondary storage, like an entry level NAS filled with fat and cheap disks, or Deduplication Appliance of some sort...maybe Object Storage as an option?

Requirement #1 can be easily achieved with built-in schedule and retention options - set backup job to 14 restore points, Synthetic Full weekly. Done.
Requirement #2+3(guess #3 incremental option means it adds changes to full created with #2?) is tricky as it falls out of typical job schedule options. You can create a separate backup job targeting same machines that will be scheduled for automatic start once a week. Make sure to disable periodic Full backups on it. Job will create 1 full and running once a week, it will add +1 increment per week. With a simple powershell script you can change that job settings to switch to Full backup mode every 6th week. That change can be done with built-in post-job script engine, or triggered from outside Veeam.

For periodic standalone Full backups(no increments), you can also script Export Backup(no managed retention) or VeeamZIP(with automatic retention) and use Windows Scheduler to obtain Full backup every X weeks.

Tape requirement could be tough - since Veeam does not track backup files "age" for tape offloads, you will need to dynamically change tape job content on the fly before job kicks in. For example, every Sunday run a script that will check repository for oldest .vbk(full backup file) in the chain and if it is older than 6 months, add it to the tape job. Monday morning you will find oldest 6+ months old .vbk on the tape to put into archive.

/Thanks!

[tri_94]

Hi many thanks for your reply.

I'm relativity new to Veeam Backup.
We have 3 enterprise SAN's, One is using RFS.
This is what we are planning to use for Short/Medium term storage.
We also have a LTO 8 Autoloader which is the plan for the older data

The requirement 1 is fine and have that setup already and it seems to be working, Although it seems that some times end up with 3 Fulls?

So if I try to not over complicate things more then needed. What is the best way to keep the backup long term?
As I don't think only keeping monthly would give us the restore options needed, But don't have the space to go for Fulls weekly. hence why i was thinking of every 6 weeks for a full and then incremental for the weeks. If my understanding is correct that would give me a 5 week blockchain so if the full didn't work I'd lose the 6 weeks worth of data?

I need the setup to be simple enough for others to understand what its doing and how too.

Thanks
Nick

[foggy]

Although it seems that some times end up with 3 Fulls?

This is how forward incremental mode with periodic fulls works. Depending on the day of the week, you will see two or three fulls on disk.

What is the best way to keep the backup long term?

Typically some sort of GFS retention is used for that. You have the option of configuring it in backup or backup copy jobs.

If my understanding is correct that would give me a 5 week blockchain so if the full didn't work I'd lose the 6 weeks worth of data?

That's correct.