Can i exclude restore points for backup to tape

[tfloor]

Hi,

In my setup i have 14 restore points doing forward incremental. each night 00:15
On Saturday i do a Synthetic full.
And the first saturday of the month i perform an active full.


Now i use backup exec to backup each day the increments file to tape for monday till friday
the saturday tape will backup the full backup from that day. So it only will backup 1 full backup per job each saturday.

But when i want to migrate to veeam tape backup, and for example i will start on saturday, then it will backup 3 full backup files per job i think. Because that is what he found. (There are 4 tapes for that day, and that's enough for 1 full backup for all the jobs)

Do i have to remove all my backups and start from scratch to begin with 1 full backup on saturday and get increments the days after that.
I need to export the tapes each day to another location.

I hope someone understand this question

[Dima P.]

Hello Tristan,

It is currently not possible to exclude the restore point from a backup to tape job, as backup to tape job writes what it gets from the original backup job. The only possible exclusion - is to write the full backups only, skipping the increments (Backup to Tape Job > Media Pool > Proceed Incremental backup) So right now if you create backup to tape job and link to your original backup job it will put all the backup files to tape.

If you recreate the original backup job – it would start from scratch but when it comes to the first Saturday of the month it again would have three full backups – one created by active full, another two by synthetic fulls during last 2 weeks. But in case you would export the tape after the first Synthetic full as you mentioned - it would work.

Hope this makes sense,
Thank you.

[sbbots]

I don't know if this is of any help to you, but I run a similar backup schedule at my sites. I had to create a second job and repository just for offsite backups so that it would only backup 1 full backup to tape, not every restore point.

Job #1
- Location is backup repository #1 on a NAS
- Incremental backup - Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu
- Synthetic full backup - Fri
- 20 restore points (4 weeks)

Job #2 (tape backup for offsite)
- Location is backup repository #2 on a NAS
- Reverse incremental backup - 1st Sat of every month
- Secondary target - LTO5 tape drive
- 1 restore point

By chosing reverse incremental in Job #2, only a full backup is created each time. Once the full backup is complete, it is copied to tape (secondary target). I had to create a tape job first and schedule it to run after Job #2 is complete.

Maybe someone from Veeam can correct my logic, but this is the only way I have found for tape jobs to copy a single full backup each month without multiple restore points.

[tfloor]

Sbbots,

I think you are right for your situation, since there is no option to tell veeam only backup the most recently full backup to tape, or delete older vbk's. (But that is Reverse incremental !).

In my situation i have to export the tapes each day grrrrr.

[tfloor]

Hello Tristan,

It is currently not possible to exclude the restore point from a backup to tape job, as backup to tape job writes what it gets from the original backup job. The only possible exclusion - is to write the full backups only, skipping the increments (Backup to Tape Job > Media Pool > Proceed Incremental backup) So right now if you create backup to tape job and link to your original backup job it will put all the backup files to tape.

If you recreate the original backup job – it would start from scratch but when it comes to the first Saturday of the month it again would have three full backups – one created by active full, another two by synthetic fulls during last 2 weeks. But in case you would export the tape after the first Synthetic full as you mentioned - it would work.

Hope this makes sense,
Thank you.

Yep, Cloning the job is enough to begin with a clean full active, and that can go to a linked tape job.
I will start with doing that tomorrow. Shutting down backup exec and see how it goes with veeam.

[veremin]

Additionally, if you’re ok with losing VM tape tracking mechanism, you can utilize “files to tape” job in conjunction with Powershell.

The algorithm should be as the following:

1) Create a folder called “Latest VBK” and specify it as a source for a “file to tape” job.
2) Leave the tape job without any schedule.
3) Write an a script which will find the latest .vbk file, copy it to the aforesaid folder, execute corresponding tape job and delete .vbk file once the job is done.
4) Schedule this script via Windows scheduler to run at a given time.

Thanks.

[iisics]

May I have such script? I am facing the problem in Veeam 8.0 to tape.

The backup to tape (LTO5) drive too long, so that unable to backup to tape daily and accumulate more than one backup files need to backup to tape and makes the backup become slower either.

Please help how to ignore and I only need to backup the latest restorepoint is good to my client!

Please help! My boss so frustrated about this issue.

[Dima P.]

Please check the following thread, several scripts are well described there: Backup to Tape only last backup with reversed incremental