Multiple incremental backups on tape, daily

[uweiss]

Hi,

I've contacted Veeam support some months ago because of this, but their answers were not very helpful. I think they simply didn't understand what i have to achieve.

We're doing several weekly full backups (Active or Synthetic) every Friday to Saturday night using multiple jobs. The rest of the week daily incrementals are created. Every day, the backups have to copied to tape. But for the incrementals, i have to have all incrementals of the week on one tape, every day. The reason to do it this was is, that i don't want to read seven tapes in the worst case to get all required backup files for a restore, but only two (The full backup and the newest tape with all the incrementals)

So, at the end of the week, i should end up with the following tapes:
Tape 1 (Full): Full Backups (from Friday)
Tape 2 (Inc): Incrementals (from Saturday)
Tape 3 (Inc): Incrementals (from Sat, Sun)
Tape 4 (Inc): Incrementals (from Sat, Sun, Mon)
Tape 5 (Inc): Incrementals (from Sat, Sun, Mon, Tue)
Tape 6 (Inc): Incrementals (from Sat, Sun, Mon, Tue, Wed)
Tape 7 (Inc): Incrementals (from Sat, Sun, Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu)

Don't think this is possible using the GUI only. Maybe someone knows if that can be done using PowerShell somehow?

Long time ago, before Veeam supported tape drives, i wrote a PowerShell script for BackupExec doing exactly this. Works perfectly fine, but really would like to get rid of the BE crap if possible.


Thank you,
Urs

[Shestakov]

Hi,
The case looks interesting.
Have you considered "Do not create, continue using the current media set" option?
It will write new restore points on the same media set, so instead of 7 tapes you can use 1 or 2 if you want Full and Incremental backups written to different media pools.
Thanks!

[uweiss]

Hi,

Thanks for the answer.

But, doesn't this option only works as long i use the same tape?

Do not create, continue using the current media set. If this option is selected, each subsequent backup session will write its backup set to the existing media set: it will append backup content to the content that was written to tape with a previous backup session. If, however, a backup set is started with a new tape, Veeam Backup & Replication will create a new media set for it.

If i understand that correctly, this option uses the same single tape every day to append the new incremental backup. But it has to be a new tape every day, and then it creates a new backup set anyway.

I think the only way to do this with B&R only is to have a new option which includes all incrementals since the last full backup, regardless if they have been written to another tape already.

Another idea which just came into my mind: A PowerShell Script which creates a complete new Backup to Tape job every day. But in this case, it will also copy the full backup to tape every day, and that's very bad too.

Maybe i just have to stay where i am now and use an external backup tool like BE (or maybe Windows Server Backup would work fine too) to achieve this.

Regards,
Urs

[veremin]

If don't mind sticking to scripting, may be a file to tape job would be a better option in this case. Combined with a pre-job script (that, based on day of week, will find .vbk and/or required number of increments and set those as job source) a file to tape job should help you to achieve what you're after. Thanks.

[uweiss]

Thanks. That's a very good idea i haven't thought of yet. I will definitely give that a try.

[veremin]

Should assistance with scripting be needed, feel free to create a topic in the corresponding PS subforum. We'll try to see what can be done in that regard. Thanks.