v9 GFS Job Schedule Questions

[veremin]

The GFS backup to tape job doesn't start copying data immediately, instead it just seats and waits till a new point appears within 24 hours interval.

So, can you elaborate on why you want the GFS tape job to start at 2 PM?

Thanks.

[lowlander]

Hi,

we configured tape out with a GFS job, works pretty well for us ! @12:00AM the job hits the road and will process the available restorepoints. Can you please explain what the strategy for the GFS tape job is : will it do a kind of forward lookup for restorepoints available since @12:00, or will it do a lookback for restore points available (like a default copy job does) ?

Thanks !

[Shestakov]

Hi, it makes a forward lookup, waiting for new restore points.
Please review the thread for more information.
Thanks!

[slmacquarie]

I would very much appreciate it if someone would kindly provide some clarification on how this works in the following scenario:

Weekday backup job (Mon-Fri 22:00) with synthetic full on Friday. GFS (set to only do Monthly/Yearly - I have another tape job for daily/weekly to achieve incremental daily tapes w/full weekly tapes that runs after completion of this job) set to run on first Saturday of month (defaults to 12:00am start time).

What happens if the Backup job finishes before 11:59pm on Friday? My interpretation of this thread is that the job would not proceed?

If the Backup job finishes after 12:00am Saturday, does the weekly to tape job run (set to run after completion), followed by the GFS monthly job, or does the GFS job run first because it technically started before the backup job completed? If the latter, what will happen to the 'weekly to tape' job?

What happens if there are errors that occur in the backup job and it later retries? Does the synthetic full get processed before or after retry attempts? Will the weekly job run only after the retries, or will it run sans-retries? What about the GFS?

[Dima P.]

What happens if the Backup job finishes before 11:59pm on Friday? My interpretation of this thread is that the job would not proceed?

GFS job should wait the restore point for the set day. When the source job completed this restore point is going to be written to tape.

If the Backup job finishes after 12:00am Saturday, does the weekly to tape job run (set to run after completion), followed by the GFS monthly job, or does the GFS job run first because it technically started before the backup job completed? If the latter, what will happen to the 'weekly to tape' job?

Assume, they will start at the same time if you have two drives/two tapes available.

What happens if there are errors that occur in the backup job and it later retries?

If the restore point for the set day was not created, GFS tape job will pick closest restore point instead (if its incremental - it will make a virtual full backup).

Does the synthetic full get processed before or after retry attempts?

If you are talking about virtual full on tape - after.

P.S. For detailed information please refer to the Help Center article - GFS Tape Jobs

[slmacquarie]

Thanks Dima. Given that no backup is scheduled for Saturday, the day of my GFS to Tape, it seems like the GFS will wait 24h until midnight Saturday before it gives up waiting and writes Friday's synthetic full to tape - perhaps 20 hours after it could have written the tape.

On the other hand, if I set the GFS to run on Friday instead of Saturday, it is not clear to me whether it would erroneously detect the end of Thursday's backup (if it runs over into Friday morning) and then synthesize a virtual full of that or whether it would wait until Friday evening's backup to start. If the latter, wouldn't it give up after 24 hours (before the Friday backup completes, in the event it runs over into Saturday morning) and create a synthetic virtual full of Thursday's to write to the GFS tape?

I guess this all boils down to how intelligent the GFS scheduling code is and whether it works off of the start or end time of the source backup (or both). Unless it's really intelligent, I can see this becoming a problem for me next week - this will be the first automated GFS for me.

Perhaps the documentation could be updated to cover this in more detail?

If it's not sufficiently intelligent, the scenario above makes a case for a specific time window feature to be added to the GFS schedule dialog.

[Shestakov]

The GFS logic is pretty intelligent. Even if you have the GFS-tape job scheduled on Friday and a source job starts on the Friday evening and still running on Saturday morning, the GFS job will wait for that particular job to be completed.
If the source job finally fails, the GFS job will take the previous successfully finished backup.
So I would suggest to schedule the tape-GFS job on Friday, otherwise(Saturday option) you will have all the tape processing happening on Sunday morning.
Thanks!

[slmacquarie]

Thanks for clearing that up, Shestakov, your advice was most appreciated. I guess I should have assumed Veeam would 'just work', but coming from a Backup Exec background, I've been conditioned to expect the worst. Veeam is some really great software.

[Shestakov]

Thanks for the kind words, Shane!
I`ve forwarded it to out R&D team.
Once you have a question or suggestion, don`t hesitate writing.

[ekisner]

I've been experimenting with different tape schedules, trying to get things to complete in the time allotted. Lucky for me we have weekends.

Unfortunately, I still have a sub-optimal experience.

Since my file server tape job takes the longest, I've decided to start that one first. The rest can run during the week (so that they can run between source jobs and not get killed) if they must, though they need not if things work.

To that effect, my file server source job runs on a 12 hour rotation, with a blackout between Friday from 10pm till Monday at 10am. This means the source job will "skip" Friday evenings and Monday mornings. Which in theory gives me an extra 24 hours.

Unfortunately, I cannot tell the GFS tape job that it should start its backup at a certain time. "Friday" or "Saturday" is as granular as it gets. What I want/need is "Friday at 2pm", or some other way to differentiate "after the last contiguous backup" of the period (weekly, most of the time).

[Shestakov]

Hello Erik,
That`s the expected behavior. Please review the topic for more info.
We`ve taken into account your request to specify the start time for tape GFS job.
Thanks for the feedback!

[nira99077]

Hello Veeam Forum

Has there been any progress, changes or announcements about a GFS tape job automatically being able to restart or being able to prioritise the GFS tape job so it does not fail when the daily backup kicks in.

Although this post is now approaching a year old and it being taken to the Dev team as far back as Feb this year, Veeam B&R 9 update 2 still has this issue. I have an open support case with Veeam and mentioned this post and their response is "As far as the upcoming features Support doesn't receive any details for the upcoming releases , nor is it known by this department if it will be, or if it is even a concept in development." Obviously Support and Dev do not or are not allowed to speak which is a shame.

Simply failing the tape job does not seem good enough to me as archiving backups to tape for long term retention is one of the most important parts of meeting our compliance requirements and is probably equally important for many others using Veeam.

Regards

[Shestakov]

Hello Adrian,
R&D team is here and the discussed option is going to be a part of new major release which is planned for the middle of November.
Thanks!

[nira99077]

Thanks for the prompt reply and the good news about the pending changes.
I look forward to the release.
Adrian

[Shestakov]

You are welcome, Adrian!
By the way, RTM build has been released today, so Nov, 15th is going to be the date of GA release.

[Jan Linders]

We are creating a new backup schedule.
At this moment a job with a GFS pool can only be started at 12:00 AM.
Does anyone know if there is a way to alter this time so backup jobs with GFS media pools can run in the afternoon or evening.

[Shestakov]

Hello Jan and welcome to the community!
The option to start the job at particular time is not available. Please read the thread for explanation.
Thanks!