Reconfiguring existing backup jobs after v12 upgrade

[sixarm]

Hi,

I've not yet upgraded, but this thought popped into my head this morning.

I have existing backup jobs that use a SOBR with a local performance tier and Wasabi as the capacity tier. We have this set to immediately copy to Wasabi, so Wasabi is essentially our backup location and the local performance tier only retains 2 days worth of restore points. I'm looking to upgrade to v12 and do away with the performance tier completely and backup direct to Wasabi. VBR is installed on an Azure VM, so doing away with the local disk and data has cost benefits.

What are the steps required here? I'm assuming the existing backup chain will be retained?

If any further information is required please let me know.

Thanks in advance.

[Mildur]

Hi David

The old backups on your capacity tier can still be used for restores.
But you won't be able to reuse the existing offloaded data for "direct to object storage" backup jobs.

You need to configure a new Wasabi bucket for the "Direct to Object Storage" backup jobs. The first backup will be an active full backup in wasabi.
After the first full backup in wasabi, only incremental changes will be offloaded (forever forward incremental). An exception exists if you have scheduled regular active full backups. For backup jobs that are transferred directly to the object storage, the entire storage space is used for this active full backups. This behavior differs from active full backups and capacity tier.

Best,
Fabian

[msnerd2000]

Hello,

You need to configure a new Wasabi bucket for the "Direct to Object Storage" backup jobs. The first backup will be an active full backup in wasabi.
After the first full backup in wasabi, only incremental changes will be offloaded (forever forward incremental). An exception exists if you have scheduled regular active full backups. For backup jobs that are transferred directly to the object storage, the entire storage space is used for this active full backups. This behavior differs from active full backups and capacity tier.

if gfs is activated in the "backup copy job", the "full backups" (weekly/monthly/yearly) also count as an "active full backup"?
How is the space in the object storage used?

would that mean if my first full backup has 1tb:

1tb first full backup
+ daily incremental backups (eg 90days)
+ 1tb first week backup (+ 1tb second week backup ...)
+ 1tb first monthly backup (+ 1tb second monthly backup ...)

[Mildur]

Hi Msnerd2000

if gfs is activated in the "backup copy job", the "full backups" (weekly/monthly/yearly) also count as an "active full backup"?
How is the space in the object storage used?

Direct Backup to Object Storage is forever incremental. GFS backups are only tagged as weekly, monthly or yearly restore points. They don't count as "active full" and therefore won't require the space of an entire full in object storage.

On Object storage, you don't have backup files (vbm, vbk, vib). A restore point is split into blocks (default: 1MB) and then transferred as objects to the object storage. Only unique blocks will be stored as objects.
The first backup will transfer the entire backup size to the object storage repository. All following backups will only transfer changed blocks. When you restore data from object storage, Veeam knows which objects belongs to the chosen restore point.

On the day you configured a GFS backup, Veeam first transfers the changed blocks and then marks the changed and required unchanged objects as the GFS restore point. The objects are then retained according to your GFS retention policy.

Best,
Fabian

[msnerd2000]

Hi Fabian,

thank you very much for excellent answer