How to retain VM backups past decommissioning of the VM

[bretth]

How do you handle retaining VM backups past the decommissioning of the VM?

We have to retain some server backups for 7 years after they are decommissioned, so I need to get them onto tape. Unless I happen to take that final backup just before the yearly tape jobs are run though, getting them onto tape is hard. What I would like to do is take a final backup of the VM, and add that backup to a group of some sort so I can add the group to monthly and yearly tapes. This would save me having to figure out which tapes would have that final backup if it was needed - I just grab a monthly or yearly tape and it will be there.

I can't see a way to do this.

I can take a VeeamZIP of the VM, but if I save that into my immutable repo I can't see how to get that onto tape. It doesn't show up as available to be added to a tape job.
If I run a normal backup, I have to keep the job to be able to add it to a tape job, but that way I'll wind up with many once-off jobs.
I've been running a final backup job, then deleting the job retaining its data so the backup goes into Disk (Exported), but these don't show up as backups I can add to a tape job.

Dodgy workaround 1: run the final backup, keep the job until the next yearly backup, add the year's final backup jobs to the tape job just before the yearly backup to tape, then delete the year's final backup jobs. Nasty, manual process, prone to missing the job in the yearly tape jobs, and I'd still have to know which annual tape to look at.

Dodgy workaround 2: run the final backup, keep the job for 7 years, add all the final backups less than 7 years old to the tape job just before the yearly backup to tape, then remove them again after the yearly backup to tape job and delete the final backups that are over 7 years old. Even nastier, manual process, prone to missing the jobs in the yearly tape jobs, and I'd have a huge collection of once-off jobs cluttering up the Jobs pane.

Anyone have a better way to do this?

[david.domask]

Hi Bretth,

Consider VeeamZIP as it's built for one-off Full backups, and then using a File to Tape job that targets the same media pool as your Yearly Tape backups. Assuming the media pool is not a GFS one, you can send File to Tape and Backup to Tape jobs to the same media pool, and you can schedule the File to Tape job to run yearly with the Months option. I think that automates most of your process; if it were me trying to solve this, I would make a repository for the VeeamZIPs, add the root folder of the repository to the File to Tape job, and just send the VeeamZIPs of the decommissioned server to that specific repository. When the File to Tape job runs, it will simply copy the contents of the folder to tape.

Would that work for you?

[bretth]

Thanks David, that gave me what I needed.

I use a LHR, so these final backups need to go into it as well. The path idea you gave me works well though, I hadn't realised that all the VeeamZIP jobs go into one folder in the repo.

I created a File to Tape job that pulls data from the /mnt/repo/backups/VeeamZIP path in the LHR and scheduled it to run on the 1st of each month. This job will then put all the VeeamZIP jobs onto tape, and the only manual intervention needed will be to create the VeeamZIP in the first place, and remove the VeeamZIP job for aged servers when they are no longer needed.

[david.domask]

Glad I could help bretth, and glad this solution works.

Process is exactly what I imagined. If you want to automate further, you can trigger VeeamZip from Powershell with Start-VBRZip. So if you have a known set of machines that will need to participate in this process, you can just add them to the script and set it to trigger prior to your end of month tape job.

[bretth]

Thanks again David, but I don't really want to script it with Powershell because that would have jobs running from 2 places.

What would actually be very helpful though is a bit more flexibility with scheduling. With my backups the best option is to have the file to tape job run at 4am on the 1st of the month, but if that happens to be a Monday then it will add the files to the previous week's tape, which will mean it will not be on the monthly tapes. My workaround is to manually run the F2T job on the 2nd of the month if the 1st is a Monday. Clunky, but it works. A schedule based on '1st of month if not Monday else 2nd of month' is a bit much to ask for, but being able to schedule a job for specified days of the month (ie choose dates rather than select one date from a dropdown) would let me run it on the 1st and 2nd of the month, and would cover it with minimal downsides.