Migrating from Arcserve

[ian.cope@york.ac.uk]

Ok, for years we've been an arcserve site, but for operational reasons we are moving to veeam. Certain backup operations (still Veeam) are managed out of my control and are possibly not as robust in terms of retention for my purposes.
So, what I'm missing in particular is the ability to handle accidental deletions that could have occurred over a few years - at a quite small time window. (A bit similar to extended previous versions/shadown copies). I have these set up, but there is only so much you can do.
My aim, for certain data shares/file servers is to attempt to maintain a long standing backup procedure where I can recover any file from the past few years.
Initial intention is to create a Windows Agent Job to backup the appropriate data volumes. I set at 365 initially retention, but then realised that any corruption in the chain could be disastrous. So I would need to generate Active Full Backups, but then space is limited. I can generate Backup Copy Jobs on a separate data storage. And additional I can hook in our old tape drives. There seem to be so many settings including GFS etc. There is oddles of information out there that describe individual processes and how to do them, but nothing I've really found which describes the best way to manage a backup strategy or indeed describes when to use or not use certain features.
There probably is that sort of information somewhere. Could anyone describe the best way to merge/manage the above options and suggest from Veeam backup experiences how best to accomplish my task in the most efficient manner using Veeam best practices.

I might also add that I'm using the Community Edition as I only really have 5 servers I need to address, although additional licenses maybe required for tape offload....I haven't quite configured that yet. (If Essentials required I could purchase the appropriate license if need be).

Regards

Ian

[HannesK]

Hello,
at first it would be interesting to know what you are using: is it physical servers or virtual machines (VMs)? If VMs, what hypervisor do you have (VMware, Hyper-V, Nutanix...)

second it would be good to know, what you try to achieve. How long do you want to store your data and where (disk, tape, cloud...) and which operating systems are we talking about (sounds like Windows only?)

Best regards,
Hannes

[ian.cope@york.ac.uk]

They are VM's but I will be used Windows Agent Backup and doing Volume level backups.

I need to have the ability to restore any file from the last 5 years ostensibly and the narrower the time frame the better.

Ian

[HannesK]

Hello,
I would always go for hypervisor backup, but if you really want to go with agents, then the following way is the easiest

- install Veeam Backup & Replication on the backup server (dedicated machine to separate backup from production)
- backup repository with REFS to avoid wasting disk space with GFS (weekly / monthly / yearly) full backups
- add backup jobs (for 5 agents, it probably does not pay off to work with protection groups, so you can add them directly to the jobs)
- to go for 5 years, I have not seen anyone doing 1825 days backup (it's technically possible, but sounds like a waste of disk space). Select your weeks / months / years in the GFS settings
- configure backup copy jobs for a second copy
- go for backup

Best regards,
Hannes

[ian.cope@york.ac.uk]

Thanks for the advice. Will check our REFS as haven't actually used that in production yet.

Ian

[MarkBoothmaa]

I's second what Hannes said regarding hypervisor backup. Its a much better option as you will be able to restore VM's in the event of a disaster as well as still being able to do file level recovery.

[ian.cope@york.ac.uk]

We have VM backups for DR, however, I need greater flexibility for my particular file servers.