Backup windows and aborted backup jobs

[DaFresh]

Hello,

I would like to use the "backup window" feature of Veeam to stop backups occurring during production hours.
The question is, when a backup is stopped because it exceed the allowed window, what happens with the already sended data (blocks). Are they simply deleted/ignored or the next backup just "continue" from where it has stopped, plus the newly changed blocks ?

Thx,

Cédric

[veremin]

Hi, Cedric. The situation will be similar to those when you manually abort a job. For now there is no “pause/continue” functionality, so, a job won’t resume from the point when it has been stopped by backup window, but will try to perform a new run, instead.

Thanks.

[DaFresh]

Hi Vladimir,

So if I understand good, previous sended blocks are discarded (at the time the job aborts ?), and the next try start as a normal backup, and need to send the same amount of data than the previous job + blocks that has changed during the time delta ? (we are is the case where this is not a full / a previous backup has succeed)

This is because the Veeam helper snapshot has been removed right ? if Veeam keeps the snapshot of the failed job, I suppose the job can resumed.

[DaFresh]

If I am right, it would be amazing, specifically for offsite backups needs (which is mine), to implement a feature like "keep the Veeam snapshot helper if the job is aborted by the time window limitation, and try to finish it on the next window".
Of course the down sides are :

- the snapshot can become very big on heavy IO loaded VM
- the storage performances cost (due to the snapshot) on the concerned VM
- the state of a completed backup is the one of the help snapshot, not the day when it has succeeded

[Vitaliy S.]

Hi Cedric,

If you're referring to offsite backups scenario specifically, then Veeam B&R v7 will have backup copy jobs, that will be copying VMs from backups to the offsite location/secondary repository. VMs data will be retrieved directly from the backup files, so there will be no negative effect of keeping VM snapshots for extended period of time. Moreover, these jobs will be able to pause and resume on VM data transfer process.

See these links for more information:
http://www.veeam.com/blog/countdown-to- ... ion-2.html
http://go.veeam.com/backup-v7-webinar-s ... l#06202013

Hope this helps!

[veremin]

Yep, as mentioned above, with the introduction of Veeam backup copy job, your offsite backup plan is likely to undergo several changes. The first and most crucial one is that offsite copying job will work with a backup data, leaving production VM intact. So, there won’t be any need to snapshot a given VM twice, or keeping a snapshot till an offsite job is complete, etc.

Thanks.

[DaFresh]

Looks great, thanks for infos.