What is the expected behavior with this schedule?

[m@x]

Code: Select all

General ------------------------------------------
Backup job name: Media Backup
Backup job description: M:\ drive backup

Source -------------------------------------------
Backup mode: volume level backup
Included items: Media (M:)

Destination --------------------------------------
Local folder: F:\VeeamBackup\
Keep restore points for the last 1 cycles
Compression level: Optimal (recommended)
Storage optimization: Local target
Storage encryption: disabled

Guest processing ---------------------------------
Application-aware processing: [disabled]
Guest file system indexing: [disabled]
Script processing: [disabled]

Schedule -----------------------------------------
Schedule: server
On [Sunday] at [12:00 PM]
Retry failed job 3 times
Wait before each retry attempt for: 10 minutes
Create active full backups weekly on Sunday

Created the job today (Thursday) and initiated the first full backup [Backup Now].
What will happen I invoke another [Backup Now] manually today (same day)?

What will I be getting: an incremental followed by a merge or another full?

Veeam license: Server.

[Egor Yakovlev]

Hi Max

That would be an increment followed by a merge.

Thanks!

[m@x]

That would be an increment followed by a merge.

Hi Egor,

That's exactly what I would expect too, but unfortunately this is not the case. Veeam could argue that it's by design, but I see it as UX flaw, because it does not align with logical expectations of a user.
The result will be more and more incrementals without merge, every time you hit that [Backup Now] button. And the reason being this setting:

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Create active full backups weekly on Sunday

This setting is telling the agent to not modify the chain. The key takeaway is although the setting is for Active Fulls, the rule "do not modify the chain" starts to apply to any kind of backups that are being run. So every time you hit [Backup Now] to initiate an incremental, the chain will not be merged despite only 1 restore point retention.

Let's take this experiment even further. We will change the retention to 3 recovery points (for the sake of better demonstration) and hit [Backup Now] a few more times until we have one full and 10 incrementals.
But then, for the 11th time, let's initiate a manual Active Backup by hitting [Active full backup] button.

As per documentation, the manually initiated Active Full acts differently than a scheduled one, and in theory it should merge the previous full and 9 incrementals, resulting in a total of 3 recovery points: [1] Full + [2] Incremental + [3] New active full. But that's not going to happen. There will be all 11 recovery points. Even more, if we hit [Backup Now] again, we will have [1] Full + [2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10] Incrementals + 11 [Active full] + [12] Incremental. All because the job is configured with Create active full backups weekly on Sunday, that will delete the previous chain completely once the new chain has 3 recovery points.

Manual Active Full vs Scheduled Active Full:
https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/agent ... tml?ver=40

[Egor Yakovlev]

Ahh right, sorry I missed the periodic fulls part - your investigation is right and as soon chain gets a periodic full ticked it switches from merging Forever-Forward Incremental into "classic" Forward Incremental type, where no Full->increment merge happens when retention hits.
Similar topics are rising quite often on our forums and I will see if we can make it more streamlined for our customers to use.
/Thanks!