Tape weekly/monthly jobs

[Geniek.73]

Hi,

have a question regarding weekly and monthly backup to tape jobs. Currently for some reasons we do not use GFS media pool for tape backups. I've created separate weekly, monthly & yearly media pools with different retention. We have scheduled weekly jobs to run every Friday and monthly jobs to run on first Friday of the month. Unfortunately there is difference in job logic compared to BE. On first Friday both tape jobs starts on the same time. in BE by default less frequent job (monthly vs weekly or yearly vs monthly (weekly)) automatically dismissed more frequent one. in Veeam both jobs start at the same time to backup data to different media pools. Is there any possibility to control that from within Veeam console?
I found some old post with similar problem tape-f29/daily-weekly-monthly-yearly-ba ... 23026.html but do you know if the only option is to disable weekly tape jobs via task scheduler on first Friday and enable them later on?

[Shestakov]

Hi Geniek.73,
since you don`t leverage tape GFS but just create 2 media pools called "Weekly" and "Monthly" VBR treats them alike.
If you want to avoid job overlapping, I would play with job schedule as that`s the best way to prioritize jobs.
Thanks!

[Geniek.73]

Hi Shestakov,

I'm not concerned about job overlapping but rather about weekly job running also when only monthly one shoud be executed. I don't want the same data to be duplicated to weekly & monthly tapes. The same situation will be for yearly backup2tape job when also weekly & monthly job will be exectuted at the same time.

[Shestakov]

Well, GFS media pool was created to address this and other issues.
So instead of creating tricky workarounds, why not to just use GFS media pool?

[Geniek.73]

But GFS pool doesn't support incremental jobs. Also backup2tape schedule is better controlled using standard media pools (at least for me )
So I assume there is no option to do it in standard way besides tricky one?

[Shestakov]

You may schedule a script to disable weekly backup when it`s supposed to run with the monthly one and enable it back next day.
But I would use GFS Media pool for historical backups and simple media pool for daily backups instead.
Thanks!

[Geniek.73]

Thx for answer. I need to rethink how to best approach this. For now I've made a script to disable weekly jobs when monthly ones needs to be executed.

[Shestakov]

You are welcome.
Your plan makes sense. Incremental backups in GFS Media pool option is in our road map by the way

[ChrisJ0907]

I've done this, but after my Monthly job has ran, my daily incremental job is now doing a full backup too. Why?? when I've got the full backups in the monthly job, which ran on Sunday? Why can't I have a job with no full and only incrementals? I'm not using a GFS Media Pool, just Simple Media Pools for Daily/Weekly/Monthly

[veremin]

This is by design. Two jobs act independently on each other - in other words, one knows nothing about what's been archived by the other.

[ChrisJ0907]

I got that when the full started again. I think I'm getting it now on how to schedule this.

What I've done is create 4 scripts to enable and disable the weekly and monthly jobs. So for instance, my full backup runs on a Sunday at noon, and he monthly is on the last Sunday of each month.

I've created 3 Media Pools Daily, Weekly and Monthly. Created two jobs Weekly and Monthly, each with Incremental backup enabled and using the Daily Media Pool. On the first Sunday of each month, I have a scheduled task to enable weekly tape job, and then another to disable the monthly tape job. The weekly runs until the last Sunday, when the monthly job is enabled, and weekly is disabled. Full runs on the last Sunday, and I leave the monthly job enabled for a week, writing the incremental jobs to the Daily Media Pool, that way I don't duplicate the full backup.

Does that make more sense?

[veremin]

You seem to have answered your requirements. Nevertheless, I still believe that usage of GFS media pools (specifically designed for similar scenarios) would less painful. Can you tell us the reasons why GFS media pool is no go for you? Thanks.

[ChrisJ0907]

For myself, it's just that I need to backup the incremental files to tape too. I can't seem to do that with GFS, but would happily use GFS if/when it's possible

[veremin]

We're planning to add it down the road. But even if you stick to current GFS mechanism and couple it with additional daily job to cope with increments, your life would be much easier in my opinion (3 Media Pools as well as complex scheduling scripts wouldn't be requried). Thanks.

[ChrisJ0907]

Call me stupid, but I don't see how I make that work, especially if tape jobs are not aware of each other and what is backed up, which means I'd have the full job duplicated onto another set of tapes. I do an active full each week.

[veremin]

So, you must be using "copy only latest chain" option to make tape jobs copy backups starting from the latest full backup, right? By doing this you managed to avoid having one full backup copied to tapes twice.

I got it, you can stick with this approach, until incremental option is added to GFS functionality.

Thanks.

[ChrisJ0907]

Yes I am using the copy only latest chain option. It's working ok for me at the moment, it's only a 1 line script, which I realise I can make 2 lines, and use 2 scripts on a schedule. All good

Looking forward to the GFS capability though. That is until we're ready to move away from tape. The best way I could think to avoid duplicate full, was to leave the monthly full to tape running for a week to capture the incremental, before the next active full appears.

[ChrisJ0907]

I know this is very simple, but for anyone who like me, was looking for a similar answer here are the scripts I use. Hopefully not teaching too many how to suck eggs

End of the month

Code: Select all

asnp VeeamPSSnapin
Disable-VBRJob -Job "Weekly Backups"
Enable-VBRJob -Job "Monthly Backups"

Beginning of the month

Code: Select all

asnp VeeamPSSnapin
Disable-VBRJob -Job "Monthly Backups"
Enable-VBRJob -Job "Weekly Backups"

I have these saved in C:\Scripts for example and then run a scheduled task

Start a Program - Powershell.exe and then in the add arguments box I have -ExecutionPolicy Bypass C:\Scripts\Disable_Monthly_Tape_Schedule.ps1

[veremin]

The best way I could think to avoid duplicate full, was to leave the monthly full to tape running for a week to capture the incremental, before the next active full appears.

Yep, the workaround looks good, indeed. At first I didn't get it, thinking more about complexity it brings, but then...

I know this is very simple, but for anyone who like me, was looking for a similar answer here are the scripts I use. Hopefully not teaching too many how to suck eggs

Practice's showed me that there is no such thing as "simple" script, so thank you for sharing them with the community; appreciated.