storing backup data offsite

[monsterlab]

Hello all,

I know there are lots of existing threads on the topic of storing backup data offsite, but I haven't been able to find one that addresses my question specifically. In a nutshell, my company has a policy to keep backup data at our primary datacenter for 7 days and 60 days offsite at our secondary datacenter. I'm currently running a second Veeam job that runs after the primary jobs. It backs up to a data repository at the secondary location, and I have those jobs set for 60 day retention. This is working fine, but as I start to add more VMs to the backup job, I fear that having each job running twice each night will exceed the time allotted for our backup window. We have about 200 VMs in our production environment.

I've thought about doing an RSYNC job to the secondary site, but I'm concerned about the data getting out of sync once we had more than 7 days stored at the secondary location. Is anyone else doing offsite jobs with longer retention times than the primary site? If so, what's your strategy?

Thanks!

[foggy]

Hello! What backup mode do you use? How about just copying the latest restore point (if forward incremental is used) or two latest restore points (in case of reverse incremental)?

There are also existing topics that describe ways to synchronize only the latest restore point using rsync for different backup modes, please review:
Veeam, rsync and incremental mode : would this work
V5 VBK file names

However, in this case you have to manually control retention in offsite location (or create some script to automate that).

[monsterlab]

Thanks for the reply!

We're doing reversed incremental backups. I like the idea of doing an rsync job of just the two most recent backups. I'm assuming I'd need to implement the registry fix that disables the file naming by date, correct?

Just curious... Why couldn't I just rsync the most recent backup file to the offsite location and let that append for 60 days? What is the purpose of the file from the second day?

Thank you for your help!

[foggy]

I'm assuming I'd need to implement the registry fix that disables the file naming by date, correct?

I believe that the script provided in the referenced thread allows to sync the latest VBK (no matter of its name) to offsite location.

Just curious... Why couldn't I just rsync the most recent backup file to the offsite location and let that append for 60 days? What is the purpose of the file from the second day?

If you sync the VBK file only, you will not have 60 restore points in your offsite location, just the single latest restore point (VBK file itself). This way is more suitable if you offload those VBK's to tape.

[dellock6]

Also be careful, reverse incremental is not at all the best backup mode for offsite storing: vbk file ismodified every day, and also it's name changes, so rsync is in trouble to understand that is the same file of yesterday with only the new blocks in it. Better switch to forward incremental if you need than to rsync the files, unless you have a pretty huge bandwidth.

Luca.