Tape Backup retention with monthly backup

[redhorse]

Good morning,

we migrated from Backup Exec to Veeam on 2012 to backup our vSphere-Environment und we are using Veeam tape backup since 2014 with great success.

Now, it's time to migrate from BE to Veeam on our remote site. Today, there is just one server (Windows 2008 R2) with Backup Exec installed and the tape drive is connected directly. I already installed the Veeam Agent and cofigured all necessary settings to backup to a Veeam repository which is located on a NAS at the remote site, this works great. A test backup to tape was successful, too.

Now my question, how can I achieve this tape backup configuration:
- Full backup to tape Monday to Friday with a retention of 14 days
- Last backup in month has to be protected for one year (if it's easier to configure: backup of last Friday in month)

I think GFS is not my option because it's not possible to have a daily backup, isn't it?

Just another question: On this physical server a Hyper-V VM is running, is it supported to use the Veeam Agent to backup this VM? I think there is no useful way to license the backup of this VM with a regular Veeam Backup job.

Thanks!

[Shestakov]

Hello,

Now my question, how can I achieve this tape backup configuration:
- Full backup to tape Monday to Friday with a retention of 14 days
- Last backup in month has to be protected for one year (if it's easier to configure: backup of last Friday in month)

You need 2 Media pools, one for full backups with protection period = 1 year, another for incremental backups with protection period = 2 weeks and when you create Backup to tape job, point fulls and increments accordingly.

I think GFS is not my option because it's not possible to have a daily backup, isn't it?

Correct. There is no daily tape backup option.

On this physical server a Hyper-V VM is running, is it supported to use the Veeam Agent to backup this VM?

Yes, you can install Veeam Agent on VM and make backup.
Thanks!

[redhorse]

You need 2 Media pools, one for full backups with protection period = 1 year, another for incremental backups with protection period = 2 weeks and when you create Backup to tape job, point fulls and increments accordingly.

We don't want to backup incrementals, we just need a daily full backup but with the different retentions. So, that's not possbile with one tape job?

[Shestakov]

It's possible, but not with one tape job.
In this case you need 2. And you need the primary backup job working in reverse incremental mode to have full backups every day.

[redhorse]

It's possible, but not with one tape job.
In this case you need 2. And you need the primary backup job working in reverse incremental mode to have full backups every day.

Why do wee need a reverse incremental job as source job? Full backup to tape is working in my test with forever incremental as source job.

[Shestakov]

Because with forever incremental backup chain as a source, backup to tape job copies the full backup from disk only once. After that, it copies new increments and creates virtual fulls regularly, or, if archiving of increments is disabled, creates only virtual fulls.
Does it work for you or you want full backups to be written on tapes daily?

[redhorse]

Increments are disabled, but if I activate weekly full with schedule Monday to Sunday I should have a daily (virtual) full backup to tape?

[Shestakov]

If you enable active full backups, that will not be forever forward chain. And if you schedule active fulls daily, you will have fulls only on tapes.

[redhorse]

Sorry, it was a misunderstanding Just for clarification:

Source job: Forever incremental (no active full)
Tape job: Daily full backup, no incremental

[Shestakov]

I see. No problem
In this case you should have virtual full backups on tapes, yes.

[redhorse]

I have just two further questions:

1. I read in the documemtation, that I can have a lower retention for tape media pool than for the source backup, if I use forever incremental as a source job. Is that correct? I want to have a tape retention of 5 days and a disk retention of 14 days.
2. The source job is running daily and I configured the tape job to start after the source job is finished, but I just need a tape backup on Monday to Friday. I scheduled the full backup for Monday to Friday without incremental backup and the schedule option "Run the job automatically after this job" is activated. Is this the correct way and does it work?

[Shestakov]

1.Settings look correct. But you need to keep in mind that tape media sets have protection period rather than retention policy. It's a bit different from disk backups retention.
2. If you want only full backups, yes.
Thanks!