Host-based backup of VMware vSphere VMs.
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resruss
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Multiple full backups

Post by resruss »

I've currently got Veeam 6.1 for ESXi 5 deployed and am having some trouble getting my head around forward incrementals.
I've read http://www.veeam.com/blog/veeam-synthet ... ained.html and found that I've currently got up to 3 full backups which is chewing up disk space.
I've been trying different things like running a synthetic full weekly, enforcing retention of 7 restore points and even running the third option of transforming the latest to a full, to see what they do and try and get my number of full backups down to one.

I only tried changing the settings after I realised that my full backup had occurred several times.

Currently 1 VM has 3 VBK files and 5 incrementals, a few days apart.

My main question is how do I have Veeam only keep 1 full backup, as forever incrementals should work?
I only started changing settings once a second full backup was created by itself.
foggy
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Re: Multiple full backups

Post by foggy »

It is not quite clear which backup mode are you actually using, because you are mentioning forward incremental mode (forever incremental) and referring to the blog post about reversed incremental mode. If you need to have a single full backup as the most recent restore point, you need to select reversed incrementals (while it seems you are now running forward incrementals). Btw, both methods are explained in the product user guide in detail, so I would suggest to review it to get better understanding.
resruss
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Re: Multiple full backups

Post by resruss »

I'm not using Reverse Incrementals, what I have found is the retention policy doesn't run until after a synthetic full is run.
Is that correct?

What I've also found is that I have several full backup files created within a week, though it's not configured to.

The other night I used Transform previous full backups into rollback files, which still retained the existing full backups.

What I want to achieve is forever incremental, with one full backup file (vbk) and incrementals moving forward.
What's the best way to achieve this and what would cause a full vbk to be created in the middle of a week when it's not scheduled to perform one?

I'll definitely check out the user guide to get a better understanding of each.
foggy
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Re: Multiple full backups

Post by foggy »

Retention policy is applied at the end of each job run. While I'm not sure about the reason for creating full backups in the middle of the week (should be due to your scheduling settings or manual active fulls during the week), the number of fulls (VBK files) in the job folder depends on your retention settings (how many restore points do you keep) and with forward incremental backup mode can vary from day to day. Please review this thread for some details on how retention works with forward incremental mode.
Cokovic
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Re: Multiple full backups

Post by Cokovic »

I've got this running for one customer wihtout any issue (v6.1). It's configured to run every day, run a synthetic full every saturday and transform increments into rollbacks. Restore points are set to 7. Everything works as expected leaving me with only one full every week and a total of 7 files on disk.

Maybe you should edit your job properties and take a look into the advanced job settings. Do you have "Active full backup" set?
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