Need help to unterstand the backup concept

[Earthrise]

Hello,

ich need some help understanding when a backup actually is taken. Let's assume the following scenario:

I have a B&R Server and want to backup clients to my repository. I Set the following in the clients policy:

- Keep 10 days of backup
- Active Full Backup monthly on this day: 1
- at the following events: when backup target is connected + backup no more often than every 4 days

Question A: Does the fullbackup run independent from the "no more often than"-setting?
Question B: Does the "no more often than"-setting run independent from the fullbackup?
Question C: Does the fullbackup respect the "when backup target is connected"-setting? If not, what happens if the client isn't online on the specified day the fullbackup should run?

[Natalia Lupacheva]

Hi,

as for questions A anb B, the "Back up no more often than every <N> <time units>" option does not have any impact on the backup schedule; scheduled backups are not affected by this option:

If you choose to perform backup on specific events, you can restrict the frequency of backup job sessions. You can instruct Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows not to start the backup job at specific events more often than once a specified time interval, for example, not more often than every 2 hours. This option does not affect daily schedule. Daily backups are performed according to the defined schedule regardless of the specified time interval.

Please also take a look at this thread, might be useful.

Thanks!

[Earthrise]

Ok, so the fullbackup will just get skipped, that's pretty unfortunate. Is it correct that it is not possible to configure something like "do a fullbackup every X Snapshots"?

[Natalia Lupacheva]

Hi,

do you expect the often agents' disconnect from VBR repository?
Also, did you consider working with synthetic full backups?

Thanks!

[Earthrise]

Hi,

i want to achieve that every 4th day i turn on a client, it will make a backup. This is working perfectly with the "when backup target is connected"-setting, since every time i turn a client on, the repository will get connected to it. Every 10th backup should be a full backup. As it seems right now, i can not achieve this with Veeam, because there is no option to say "Make a full backup every X backups" and the setting for active full is just ignored if the client is not turned on at the specified day, which makes it pretty much useless to me. How would a synthetic full change anything of that?

Besides that, i already had a problem with Veeam in the past where multiple backed Virtual Hard Disks surprisingly had damaged filesystems after recovery and were not readable whereas the live system never had any problem at all. The failure kept undetected for month (Reverse incremental forever with periodic heath check every month) until we needed some (thanks god not so important!) files from one of the servers, just to find out that the whole backup chain was useless to us. The support could not explain to me how this is even possible when the system the backup comes from never had any file system error and was restartet multiple times a month. We've lost our trust in Veeam that day and the support said the only thing that could have prevented this are active full backups, since a synthetic full would carry this kind of faulire on to any further backup that originates from the faulty files. No, synthetic fulls are no option to me.

[Natalia Lupacheva]

Yes, you are right, currently the logic will be the following:
if we skipped the full backup, the next one will be incremental.

We have noted this requirement to improve the scheduling options for Full backups and will provide the improvements in the future releases, thank you for sharing your arguments.

As a workaround at the current version I would suggest to use powershell scripts to run active full backups. Would that be suitable?

Thanks!

[Earthrise]

Hello,

yes, i implemented a scripted solution yesterday, but i'm still looking forward to see this implemented in the future! A solution like "do an active full backup every X backups" would be perfect for clients in combination with the "when backup target is connected"-setting.

[Dima P.]

Earthrise,

Thanks for your post, I've added your feedback to this feature request. Cheers!