Backup to tape job with incremental + full backup to GFS?

[Mapleuser]

I'm new to Veeam and struggling really bad trying to get Veeam to work with our backup strategy.
Basically we have incremental backup running Monday-Thursday and active full backup every Friday.

For archive, we tape out the full backup and retention will use GFS - Weekly/Monthly/Yearly.

However, the "backup to tape" job doesn't allow me to use GFS in conjunction with incremental backup.
The moment I select a GFS media pool, the "backup to tape" job only contains full backup.
If I select a normal media pool, I can see incremental and full backup.

I have resorted to splitting multiple "backup to tape" jobs to address this but the schedules are clashing with each other.

How can I resolve this?

[blithespirit]

Hello, fully understand what you looking for, simple way to accomplish this is with a secondary target job on your main backup job. (chain jobs)

Create a tape backup job and specify your settings only for the GFS backups.

Create another normal backup job based off the same machines which will include your incremental specifics.

On the third page of the backup wizard choose your proxy & repository setting your incremental needs using the advance button near the bottom. Tick "Configure Secondary Location" tick box and you will see an additional step in the wizard appear (Secondary Target) and press next. On the secondary target page use the "add" button and use Jobs, select the tape backup job you created.

What this will give you is the normal scheduled incremental you need for during the week in the first backup job with the secondary target will give you your GFS backups to tape as fulls.

Hope this helps you

[Mapleuser]

Yes, I understand what you are saying but the moment I select GFS media pool in the secondary job, the incremental backup option disappears.
It only allows me to do full backup which means all my tape backup will be full backup.

I need to send my incremental backup to tape and store them offsite.
Can't seem to find a way to do this unless I use a non-GFS media pool.

[blithespirit]

I see, it is a single job you want to send to tapes as Incremental which include everything. In your policy the incrementals are the current Mon-Thur retention and then weekly/monthly/yearly full. You want to put everything to tape or do you plan to use repositories as well for faster recovery times when the data is offiste?

Our GFS policies assume full only due to the nature of the retention schedule, a yearly backup with incremental would require all the incremental's for the year to be available to keep consistency with that one single backup so a full makes more sense as it is self contained. In your case you actually have two jobs to run, one being the incremental Mon-Thurs and one the active-full to tape and GFS. This is the way Veeam would treat it.

Going back to my initial thought with a twist the first job is the backup job to a repository and secondary Target to tape with incremental's only and no GFS Mon-Thur, then second job is full-only to using GFS policy Friday only.

You say you get clashes with two jobs, if you backup to tape from a backup job you are backing up the files already backed up on the repository and not your live production data, you could schedule the second job during the day without impacting your live environment avoiding the clash.

Maybe it's just a different way to think about doing the job but you can achieve your result.

[Mapleuser]

I want to use local repositories to perform faster recovery but whatever is done via local repositories should be mirrored on tape.
Example if I were to retrieve a full month GFS backup from tape, it should let me run it together with the incremental backup on local repository

I did try to do what you suggest - secondary target to tape with incremental only Mon-Thur and another secondary job with GFS policy on Friday only.
But it still runs a full backup and stores it to my incremental tape pool. There is just no way for me to deal with this elegantly.

[mhennen]

I too are in the same perdicament. I want to use GFS media for explicit weekly/monthly/yearly tape retentions. However, we have a RTO of 3 days so i need to get my incrementals to tape and off site.

I have tried to add 2 tape jobs to my normal backup policy. The first tape job is the GFS the second is the normal tape media pool. I unticked the months in the schedule for fulls and enabled archive incrementals but it still captures the .vbk file.

I have now created a seperate Full and Incremental media pool. The full doesnt protect the media so will continue to over write the tapes and the incremental is protected for 14 days.

This is working but its a waste of time having to write the vbk files twice. We have some very large fileservers so the jobs end up queuing.

I think Veeam needs to create a incremental only media pool or have a daily in the GFS policy.