Only one VBK to Tape, Clarification.

[nikpolini]

EDIT: I just read a few move posts here in this section and looks like V9 will most likely resolve these issues... Q3 2015....

HI Everyone.
I just wanted some clarification of this issue/configuration I want to use and maybe some advice. I have read a few other forum posts of uses whom have a similar setup/issue, but no real solution....

My setup options:
Daily Incremental + Weekely active Full to a Dell DR6000. No Roll backs or forever incrementals as this extra read I/O will kill the device, Basically JUST writes for the backup to Dedup device process.

The Problem: We then backup to Tape Weekly( 5 week retention) and Monthly(12 month retention). However, I am getting in some cases 3 VBK files per week for each Backup Job when there is only one full created per week. Basically I need to have only the latest VBK to Tape. This is causing me to use 35 x 1.5TB tapes per week.

I would love to use the Virtual Synthisised Full, so only one Full per Job goes to tape, but that requiers to origional BU job to not use Acive or Synthetic Fulls and use Forever Incermental, but that extra read I/O would be an issue.

2 Options I see:
-Veeam adds a check box to Tape jobs that says: "Only backup one/latest Full to tape"
-Veeam to allow Virtual Synthetic Fulls to tape where the origional job has Active Fulls or Synth Fulls.

Your thoughs.

Thanks Nik.

[Shestakov]

Hello Nik,

Recently Virtual full backups can be created for source jobs that produce forever incremental backup chains i.e. Backup jobs with forever forward incremental backup method or Backup copy jobs. The source backup job configuration must not have scheduled synthetic or active full backups. If it does, the virtual full will be disabled even if configured in a tape job and you will have Fulls + increments on the tape.
If you want to avoid extra read I/O, I would suggest to keep using Forward Incremental backup method with Active Fulls and copy backups to tape. You can set a proper retention on the tapes to keep as many restore points as you need.

And you are correct, there is going to be some improvements and new tape features in the new v9 version. Thanks!

[nikpolini]

Well, this issues has just become even more a problem.
I have been having issues with my Primary Backup target (Dell DR60000), so in the last week I have 3 fulls from testing, these are 8TB each(Big fileserver). Now that the weekly Tape job is running, It is putting 3x8tb vbk files to tape.... That is for one server, same but worse for file server #2, it is 12tb and there are 4 VBK going to this weeks tapes!

Veeam v9 need to come soon, I am running our of tapes.

[veremin]

The ability to always copy only the latest .vbk will be indeed introduced in version 9; so, stay tuned. Thanks.