Is Reverse Incremental backup supported for physical PCs?

[ChillyHellion]

I'm using Veeam Backup & Replication to back up two physical workstations at home. I'm using B&R because it's what we're planning on using at work and it's a good excuse to stay fluent in the software. When I set up a test schedule to back up some VMs at work, I know I had these options:

* Forever Forward Incremental
* Reverse Incremental

However, when I set up a schedule for my physical workstations at home, I don't see any options to specify the backup mode during the backup. All I have is the below:

* Entire Computer
* Volume Level Backup
* File Level Backup (slower)

Am I missing a setting or am I in the wrong place? Thank you and have a great day.

[ChillyHellion]

"Backup Method" seems to be the terminology I'm looking for. I can't find a way to set the backup method for my job, which is running on:

Version: Veeam Backup & Replication 9.5 update 4
Backup Targets: two physical Windows 10 desktops, one remote and one local to the B&R install
Backup Repository: Locally attached external drive connected to the B&R server

I wasn't prompted to select a backup method when I created the job, and I can't seem to find where to edit the selection. I'm assuming it's using the default, but I don't have a way to confirm the backup method being used. I would like to select Reverse Incremental, but that doesn't seem to be an option for the above setup (or else I just can't find it, which is very possible).

[Virtuollie]

Reverse Incremental method indeed is limited to VM backup and not applicable to Agent backup.
Agents will be backed up as forward incremental forever, unless you specify scheduled full backups.

[ChillyHellion]

Oh no, that's not good. Does this limitation remain even if you have a mix of physical and virtual machines in the same job? That's one of the features I like about Arcserve UDP.

[Gostev]

Yes. Reversed incremental is least efficient in terms of IOPS, so there are no plans to implement it in new products. Can you share why is it important for you? May be you're thinking something from your past experience that don't necessarily apply to Veeam.

[ChillyHellion]

Can you share why is it important for you? May be you're thinking something from your past experience that don't necessarily apply to Veeam.

That is a good idea, thank you. I have two main considerations here:

For my workplace: we have a mix of mostly virtual machines with a single physical machine. As long as I can include all of these servers in the same backup plan, that should be okay. We only use forever forward incremental at work.

For home: I'm backing up around 6TB of data to a 9TB space, so my backup repository is unable to accommodate more than one full backup at a time. This limits me to incremental backups, either forever forward or reverse.

Because incremental backups can be variable, I'm primarily concerned with running out of space and being unable to capture a new recovery point. With reverse incremental backups, the full backup is at the end of the chain and doesn't depend on any previous links, so I'm able to delete the oldest recovery points to make space for new recovery points. With forever forward incremental, the full backup is at the beginning of the chain and is staged forward by merging with later links in the chain. Were I to run out of space, I would be unable to create new recovery points and I would be unable to delete old recovery points to make space.

Does Veeam have any protections in place to prevent the forever forward incremental backup method from running out of space?

Thank you for your perspectives on this problem; your help is very much appreciated.

[Gostev]

A simple solution could be to use ReFS for the backup repository, which makes those periodic synthetic full backups "spaceless". So you can have a few fulls in your chain, which will enable you to delete older backups.

And more "professional" solution against a backup repository running out of space is of course to use the scale-out backup repository.

[ChillyHellion]

Thank you, I'll give ReFS a try. I had shied away from it before because it requires a registry tweak to enable on Windows 10, whereas you can implement it natively on Windows Server. Would using ReFS solve the problem of running out of space? My issue is that I would need to accurately predict the amount of recovery points I need and also monitor usage closely so that my backups don't outgrow my repository. With Reverse Incremental backups, I have a "backout plan" in case my drive fills up, in that I can always delete the oldest recovery points without invalidating my backup chain. Does Veeam have any built-in protections regarding running out of space on a backup repository? Or does Veeam have any contingency tools if I do run out of space with forever forward incremental backups, such as manually merging old recovery points to make room for new ones?

Thank you for all of your help. You've provided approachable answers to a number of technical questions and I appreciate it.

[Gostev]

Does Veeam have any built-in protections regarding running out of space on a backup repository?

Yes - as I already noted earlier, it's a scale-out backup repository. This has an option to automatically offload oldest backup files whenever certain free disk space threshold is crossed.

You should keep in mind is that Veeam is an enterprise backup product, as opposed to something designed for home use. In enterprise environments, customers are required by the business to maintain certain data retention policy (often due to legal requirements), so deleting older backup just because you ran out of repository disk space is never (or rarely) an option. Which is why we focus on enabling customers to maintain set retention, as opposed to things you listed above.

[ChillyHellion]

I see. Thank you.

[Virtuollie]

One addition, you might want to give https://rps.dewin.me a try.
This is an excellent Restore Point Simulator which gives you a good idea about backup methods and the required disk space you will need based on your desired settings.
It even gives you a rough calculation of work space needed.