GFS backup to tape & Virtual Full

[AVLoki]

Hi,

I need a little help to better understand the backup to tape logic.

Preamble: i only need tape for weekly, quarterly and yearly backup. So i thaught i could plan a GFS backup to tape

Took a look at the documentation and i've seen that if the tape job is planned on a day different than the one(s) with a full backup (sinthetic or active doesn't matter) a VIRTUAL FULL is synthetized and written to tape.
https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backu ... ml?ver=100

One thing that i didn't understand is: will a full backup be written on the repository too, or just to tape?

First time i had the job scheduled with source synthetic fulls on Saturday and Tape Weekly on Monday... and i ended up having both fulls from saturday and monday on my repository.
Isn't a Virtual Full supposed to be written on tape ONLY?

Just want to understand what i did wrong in case...

[Dima P.]

Hello AVLoki,

One thing that i didn't understand is: will a full backup be written on the repository too, or just to tape?

Yes, tape GFS does not create anything on the repository. It either uses existing full backup, or synthesize full from incremental restore point on disk.

First time i had the job scheduled with source synthetic fulls on Saturday and Tape Weekly on Monday... and i ended up having both fulls from saturday and monday on my repository.

Most likely you got first full backup and additional full backup per vm backup job settings. Please check how periodic full backup is configured in the vm backup. Cheers!

[AVLoki]

Most likely you got first full backup and additional full backup per vm backup job settings. Please check how periodic full backup is configured in the vm backup. Cheers!

This backup job has been first scheduled on 2019, never had a full backup on Monday.
Might have been the monthly active full (was scheduled on Sunday) that has been delayed due to Synthetic fulls on Saturday taking a long time to complete.

I now have switched to weekly active fulls (without synthetics, too low IOPS on the target repository), and rescheduled the tape job on Monday.

Thanks!

[Dima P.]

Understood, thanks for the update. Let us know how it goes, cheers!