[Feature Request] Full backup generation utility

[KnB567]

There has been a lot of discussion about using Forever Forward Incremental backup instead of Reverse Incremental backups.
Whatever the technical niceties of FFI, they miss the mark of being able to hold the latest full backup in your hand (or tape or VTL or external disk or offline or whatever) and that is something that business owners can relate to.
Creating a Synthetic Full from FFI backups causes very heavy IO loads on storage devices trying to stream data from the last VBK and any number of VIB files (based on number of restore points), probably far more than is used in generating a VBK by Reverse Incremental. And it is heavily dependant on schedules and configuration that are not all configurable. The result is often backups missing from these synthetics, which reduces overall confidence.
Reverse Incremental capability is not implemented in Agents: Nutanix and Windows at least.

So here's the request: Make available a utility to generate the latest full backup from whatever backups are already stored in repositories from any backup source (VBR, VAW, VAN, VAL etc). It would involve:
- a suitable utility or command (PowerShell springs to mind);
- somewhere to store the generated VBK/VBM files, perhaps in a dedicated repository which could be the source for the tape job;
- having VBR understand the difference between these VBKs and backup chains used to generate them - a new category of backup in the database perhaps - so it does not break the existing incremental backup chain.

There is obviously some overhead in taking this approach, but those who want Reverse Incremental logic are prepared for this at least at the IO level, even though more storage may be required.
Another upside is that reading these VBKs becomes a straight sequential read/streaming operation which is far more efficient than combining all the data streams necessary to generate a synthetic backup on the fly. Would allow use of cheaper storage devices here.
Yet another upside is we now have another copy of the latest backups on separate media.

Ray

[PetrM]

Hi Ray,

Not sure I understand what kind of problem would this feature address? Why don't use a whole incremental chain instead of generating one more full? As far as I understand you can just change backup job schedule and it will create a synthetic backup. Also, I guess that GFS policy would partially cover this request.

Thanks!

[KnB567]

Hi Petr
Reason for request is we are unable to get a reliable mechanism to generate a daily full backup to tape - a key business Management requirement. Have been trying for months, raised many cases and engaged external expertise. we could do this with Reverse Incremental backups just with Hyper-V/VMWare, but not when you introduce Agents for Windows, Nutanix etc. Yes we could process incremental chains - but even this has its problems. Changing schedules also gives incomplete results. GFS does not cover this - in fact we want to get this working to re-establish GFS.
All existing Veeam processes have interlocking scheduling and selection criteria that are interfering with the desired result. Its not a hard concept - the latest data in a full backup to offline material every day, regardless of all other technical capabilities.
Ray

[PetrM]

Hi Ray,

What about to schedule virtual full backup to run on specific days? For example you can select all days of week.

Thanks!

[KnB567]

Hi Petr
We try this extensively, but it has specific timers that affect selection of source and does not allow for situations where a new backup (incremental or full) is not available in the interval. Often end up with backups missing from the tape. Have tried most combinations over several months and now have other engineers trying as well.
Ray

[PetrM]

Hi Ray,

One more question: did you try to use the option "As new backup files appear" in backup to tape job settings?

Thanks!

[KnB567]

Thanks Petr
I have not personally used this option, but our vendor tech support engineers have worked through all these options to no avail. Essentially nothing will be written to tape unless there is a new backup/incremental in the 24 hour period for any source VM. This is the root of our problem, and it appears to be hard-coded. Having an out-of-band utility to do this would be a simple way to solve our problem.
Ray

[PetrM]

Hi Ray,

Ok, thanks! We'll be tracking similar requests then and will consider implementation in future releases based on feedback.

Thanks!

[KnB567]

Another purpose for this utility is to overcome a key limitations of Backup Copy jobs generated by Agents - you cannot specify the source for the Copy as you can for VBR jobs. Any Backup Copy for our many VAN AHV Agents must be generated over WAN links. We would like to duplicate the original Backup Copy job contents in our central data facility to another repository for GFS/Offsite use.

[Dima P.]

Hello Ray,

Have you tried to used Export to vbk functionality and then map the resulting backup to a job?

you cannot specify the source for the Copy as you can for VBR jobs

Just to clarify, you want to select specific machines as a source for backup copy (i.e. select from infrastructure)? Thanks!

[KnB567]

Thanks Dmitry
Had not tried Export before.
Seems to partly achieve what we want, but insists on creating the exported full backup in the same repository as the source.
Would need to manually move the exported backup to final target, and possibly import it back into Veeam.
Will need to do more testing.
Cheers
Ray