Move from BE to Veeam

[redhorse]

Hello,

we want to move our Tape-Backup from Backup Exec 2014 to Veeam B&R 8.

Today we do a daily reverse incremental backup with monthly active full for our VMs and copy the latest VBK-file to tape via BackupExec every day.

In future we want to put a daily incremental backup to tape and a full-backup on Saturday to tape. How can we achieve this with Veeam? What about retention? We want to keep many restore points on disk and we want to be able to restore the latest restore points to disk in case of an issue with our backup repository. In addition to that we want to keep the latest tape backup of a month for one year.

It is very difficult to understand the Veeam documentation regarding tape backup and retention without having any experience with it. Perhaps someone has an idea how to achieve this configuration?

Thanks a lot!

[Shestakov]

Hello,

In future we want to put a daily incremental backup to tape and a full-backup on Saturday to tape. How can we achieve this with Veeam? What about retention?

You can create forward incremental backup job to store backups on a disk repository and set it to run incrementals daily+Full on Saturday.
Then you can create backup to tape job with the backup job as a source to move backups to the tape.

In addition to that we want to keep the latest tape backup of a month for one year.

You can create a media pool called “Monthly” with retention period equal to 12 months. and create another backup to tape job and point to the “Monthly” media pool and schedule it to run on monthly basis.

Is that what you were looking for?
Thanks.

[redhorse]

Hello,
You can create forward incremental backup job to store backups on a disk repository and set it to run incrementals daily+Full on Saturday.
Then you can create backup to tape job with the backup job as a source to move backups to the tape

That sounds good. The full backup is called "virtual synthetic full backup to tape" when using forever incremental. Is that right? What kind of incremental files will be send to tape after this full backup? Do I just need tapes from Saturday (syntheticfFull), Sunday and Monday to restore a VM from Monday? I want to keep 90 restore points on disk but only two weeks on tape, may I just configue a retention period of 14 days for tape?

You can create a media pool called “Monthly” with retention period equal to 12 months. and create another backup to tape job and point to the “Monthly” media pool and schedule it to run on monthly basis.
Is that what you were looking for?

Okay, in my case I want to put the full backup to tape (last Saturday in month), do I also need a seperate backup job for it?

Thank You!

[Dima P.]

Hello redhorse,

The full backup is called "virtual synthetic full backup to tape" when using forever incremental. Is that right?

Yes, or the synthesized full backup It works only for the forever incremental backup mode with no active/synthetic fulls enabled in the original backup to disk job. Additionally, you need to enable ‘process incremental backup files’ in the backup to tape job options.

Generally, you set a forever incremental backup job up, then set up a backup to tape and configure the virtual synthetic full backup to tape schedule. On the specified day backup to tape will create a full backup from the existing backup chain and relink all the upcoming increments to this new synthesized full

Do I just need tapes from Saturday (syntheticfFull), Sunday and Monday to restore a VM from Monday?

Yes, to restore from an incremental backup you have to load all previously written media that keep you existing backup chain (previous increments + full backup)

I want to keep 90 restore points on disk but only two weeks on tape, may I just configue a retention period of 14 days for tape?

Yes you can, by utilizing the said virtual synthetic full backup to tape option. I need to say that setting the tape retention shorter than in the original backup to disk is not considered to be a best practice, since tape is mostly used for long term archiving.

Okay, in my case I want to put the full backup to tape (last Saturday in month), do I also need a seperate backup job for it?

Separate backup to tape an separate media pool, since the media pool is an organizational unit that keeps you tape retention.

[redhorse]

Hello d.popov,

thank you for your very helpful answer, now I understand how it works.

Generally, you set a forever incremental backup job up, then set up a backup to tape and configure the virtual synthetic full backup to tape schedule. On the specified day backup to tape will create a full backup from the existing backup chain and relink all the upcoming increments to this new synthesized full

Does it work to use forever incremental with 90 restore points? Or should I use "normal" incremental with monthly active full to be sure that there is no problem with the backup chain? I know that it will use much more space on my backup repository.

Yes you can, by utilizing the said virtual synthetic full backup to tape option. I need to say that setting the tape retention shorter than in the original backup to disk is not considered to be a best practice, since tape is mostly used for long term archiving.

You are right! But in our case we have to restore files of our file server (> 1 TB) from older restore points very often and it would take much time to restore the whole VM from tape. I think the only way to achieve a fast restore of older restore points is to keep many restore points on disk. Or is there a better way? We do the daily and weekly backup to tape to be able to restore the repository with the latest restore points in case of lost or damaged repository and the monthly and yearly backup for long term archiving.

Thank a lot!

[veremin]

Does it work to use forever incremental with 90 restore points?

Yes, it does.

I think the only way to achieve a fast restore of older restore points is to keep many restore points on disk.

Since you're after faster restore for 3-month worth restore point, having local backup job that preserves 90 restore points sounds like a way to go.

Thanks.

[redhorse]

Yes, it does.

I had a parallel support case regarding GFS retention (#00730000) where I now got the statement that I should do an active full as often as possible ideally once a week. So I am not sure what to do now, do you have an official paper or something like that?

[veremin]

What we recommend now is to follow ultimate backup infrastructure.

As to forever forward incremental backup mode, it has been designed to do specifically what its name suggests - to be forever incremental. If you follow the described approach, full backups won't be needed.

Rarely might manual active full backup be necessary: Unrecoverable backup or backup file data corruption is detected by SureBackup, size of vbk has to be reduced due to its fragmentation, deleting lots of VM, etc.

Thank.

[Lala]

Hello everyone,
I am new here. I also have very little experience about data backup.
Now I'm supposed to take over the tasks of the replacement Backup Exec 2015 with Veeam B&R, and also the document.
Has anyone already experience? It would be nice if you could give me some advice. Many Thanks!

[PTide]

Hi and welcome to the community.

Your post has been moved to the existing topic that contains some general considerations. Although the topic is 3 years old, the answers mostly still hold true. Please review, and let us know if you have any additional questions.

Thanks!