Daily tape backups of Reversed Incremetnal VIB files

[Dennis_VW]

Hi,

We have a backup schedule in which we have disk to disk Reversed Incrementals.
Now I'd like to backup the VBK to tape during the weekend and archive the VRB files of the reversed incrementals to tape on a daily basis.

If i test this, it will backup the VBK file every time, but expect it to make a daily backup of the VRB file(s) (probably because the VBK file is changed every time when a reversed incremental is finish)

How to achieve this? (File Backups might be an option or is it the only option?)

Regards,

Dennis

[veremin]

Now I'd like to backup the VBK to tape during the weekend and archive the VRB files of the reversed incrementals to tape on a daily basis.

It's not possible as .vbk file gets updated on daily basis. Even if you stick to files to tape job, a new .vbk along with newly created incremental will be copied each time the job runs. Thanks.

[Dennis_VW]

Thanks for the reply.

If i just run a Tape job on Saturday morning that backups up the VBK and I will archive the VRB's and VBM on a daily basis.
Will I be able to perform a recovery on e.g. Wednesday by using the VBK from the weekend and the VRB's from Monday and Tuesday?

Regards,

Dennis

[PTide]

You can setup two separate file to tape jobs, each going to the same media pool. Media set should be create anew every weekend in your case so every new media set contains a separate week of backups.

Tape Job 1 settings:

"Files and Folder" - specify the directory where your reverse incremental chain is located at, click "Edit" and specify *.vrb mask so only .vrb files get processed.

"Full Backup" - disable it

"Incremental Backup" - make it start at at the end of the day so it can pick up latest .vrb

Tape Job 2 settings:

"Files and Folder" - specify the directory where your reverse incremental chain is located at, click "Edit" and specify *.vbk and *.vbm masks so only .vbk and .vbm files get processed.

"Full Backup" - make it start on Saturday so it can pick up your latest .vbk and .vbm

"Incremental Backup" - you don't really need that

However such approach will give you what you want there is not much sense in doing that because your reverse backups that are on tape are unrecoverable until you place .vbm and .vbk there. In your scenario that occurs in the end of the week thus it's basically the same if you just copied the whole chain a once on saturday.

The better approach would be to switch your source job to forever-forward with "transform to reverse option". During the week you do forward incremental chain and place it to tape daily. At the end of the week you do full backup and transform your source chain into reverse. That will make your tape backup recoverable + you'll get all benefits of reverse incremental chain.

Thank you.

[Dennis_VW]

Thanks for looking into my issue.

You suggest forever-forward on daily basis and full backups at the end of the week and transform the chain into reversed incrementals.
I've been reading the Backup methodes on the VeeAm helpcenter, and the disadvantage of transforming the chain would be that it takes longer then creating a Full backup.

After reading the Backups methodes I was thinking about:

Forever forward incrementals with retention of 6 days (or 11 when i like to have 2 weeks of restore points available).
File backup jobs:
Daily VIB to tape
Weekly VBK to tape

Will do some more tests with Synthetic Full and with Synthectic with transforming into reversed incrementals.

[PTide]

would be that it takes longer then creating a Full backup.

Actually a transform occurs only after full backup has occured. I think that you should conduct some experiments to see how long that would take in your environment, maybe it will be a reasonable amount of time.

File backup jobs:
Daily VIB to tape
Weekly VBK to tape

Just make sure that your Full goes to Tape firsta and it's the same tape where your future incrementals are going to reside at. Also please take a look at this thread as the configuration mentioned there might be matching your needs.

Thank you.

[Dennis_VW]

Thanks for pointing me to that thread.

I'm doing some tests with Forever Forward Incrementals and Synthetic Full backups.

At this moment I'm still not quite sure what the difference is between those two.
FFI: when retention is policy is met, it applies the first incremental to the Full.
Synthetics: Full backup is created at scheduled day by injecting all incrementals to previous VBK?

With both I think I will meet the requirement that I will be able to restore a Full VBK (from a weekend) with additional VIBs (from subsequent backup created after the VBK).
So basically restore tuesday nights server on Wednesday by restoring last weekends Full and VIBs from Monday and Tuesday.

[PTide]

FFI: when retention is policy is met, it applies the first incremental to the Full.

Correct.

Synthetics: Full backup is created at scheduled day by injecting all incrementals to previous VBK?

Not exactly. Synthetic full is a .vbk that is sythesized of many .vibs. In other words in order to construct synthetic full VBR takes as much data as possible from previous .vibs. Please check this article to see an animation of how the whole thing works.

With both I think I will meet the requirement that I will be able to restore a Full VBK (from a weekend) with additional VIBs (from subsequent backup created after the VBK).
So basically restore tuesday nights server on Wednesday by restoring last weekends Full and VIBs from Monday and Tuesday.

Correct. Please also keep in mind that you can use Virtual Fulls in your Tape jobs.

Thank you.

[Dennis_VW]

So many options in VeeAm

[PTide]

If you have any difficulties in setting your backup environment don't hesitate to ask.

Thank you.

[Dennis_VW]

when looking into my tape jobs, i don't have any Virtual full backup option.
Could it be a license specific feature?

[PTide]

If you click on a "Schedule..." button in "Full Backup" step you'll see a "Full Backup Schedule" pop-up window with "Specify virtual backup ... " text in it.

Do you see it?

[veremin]

when looking into my tape jobs, i don't have any Virtual full backup option.

What kind of tape job are you using? Files to tape or backups to tape one? Virtual full backup is available only for backups to tape job. Thanks.

[Dennis_VW]

I'm using Backup to Tape jobs.
Where should it be, maybe i'm just looking in the wrong spot.

[veremin]

Check Schedule tab as recommended by Pavel. Thanks.

[Dennis_VW]

Thank you.

I thought I had to check a virtual backup box somewhere, didn't know the virtual backup is default with tape.

thanks

[veremin]

It's default for source backup jobs using forward forever incremental mode. For all other jobs these settings do not have any effect whatsoever. Thanks.