Must forward incremental tape RPs equal disk RPs?

[pkelly_sts]

I have an ongoing tape backup of a Forward Incremental with weekly active full (i.e. not forever forward) and I needed a spare tape for another tape job I'm testing.

I had the expiry time on my first tape job (which is still really only testing) of 7 days and noticed that, out of 5 tapes in the media set I had one "Expired" tape in the media set so re-used it on another test tape job.

This morning I notice that the first tape job is suddenly wanting to re-write to tape a .vbk from 4 weeks ago plus a few of its subsequent .vib files.

I've gone through the non-expired tapes can verify that I can't see that .vbk on tape, but I'm not really bothered about it as it's old anyway. I thought only Forever Forward *had* to keep the same RPs on tape as the source job keeps on disk?

[Dima P.]

Hi pkelly_sts,

I thought only Forever Forward *had* to keep the same RPs on tape as the source job keeps on disk?

Same for forward incremental with periodic active fulls. That’s why we recommend to store backups on tape media longer that on disk. A possible workaround is to use ‘Process latest full backup chain only’ option (Job settings > Options > Advanced) – this one will force the tape job to ‘forget’ all the restore point created before the latest full in the chain.

[pkelly_sts]

Ah, ok, thanks for confirming.

I wonder then if it's not better to manage tape retention by RP count as with disk backups rather than by time-span?

Good to know "Process latest..." can be used after the fact, I though that was only at the point of creating the tape job.

[Dima P.]

Tape retention affects tape only and does not take into credit what data resides on particular media. Counting restore point might be interesting idea but can imagine 'management' issues when tape holds more than one VM and retention of single backup chain kicks in.

[pkelly_sts]

No different with date-based retention though? In reality it's kind of hammered into us (as Veeam users) to think more about "retention points" rather than "retention days" anyway?

[Dima P.]

I understand possible confusion, however, I can hardly imagine how to track the retention in restore points for tape media, specifically when you have multiple source backup jobs within one tape job (which is the most common setup).

[pkelly_sts]

I would have imagined it would simply monitor RPs in relation to time-frames but then, I'm not a software dev so easy for me to say