v9 GFS Media Pool & Tape Job

[McClane]

Hi,

I am just evaluating the new tape features of v9 to replace our Tivoli solution.
As far as I can see, I can't disable quarterly backups if I don't need them? And by default there are 12 monthly and 4 quarterly backups for rentention, what makes no sense to me.

What I would like to do is: Full backup on Sunday then daily incremental Mon-Sat with daily export to the vault to have a disaster recovery set of tapes with the most recent data.

Else I need a tape set for long term archive for 10 years of some servers. I would like to write those backups to an appending tape set and export these tapes once they are full. Tivoli can reorganize such tape jobs to save and minimize tapes usage. What options do I have for this?

Or maybe someone has better ideas to handle about 30TB data (long term are about 13TB at the moment).

Thx

[veremin]

As far as I can see, I can't disable quarterly backups if I don't need them?

You can, by specifying 0 opposite to Quarterly media set protection period.

Else I need a tape set for long term archive for 10 years of some servers. I would like to write those backups to an appending tape set and export these tapes once they are full.

Set 10 as a yearly mediaset overwrite protection period. Then, go to advanced settings of GFS media pool -> Yearly, and check "append backup files to incomplete tapes".

Thanks.

[Dima P.]

What I would like to do is: Full backup on Sunday then daily incremental Mon-Sat with daily export to the vault to have a disaster recovery set of tapes with the most recent data.

With GFS tape jobs you can keep only the full backups. Incremental restore points are ignored (or used for virtual full backup to tape creation). If you want to keep the incrementals on tape use the regular media pools instead.

I would like to write those backups to an appending tape set and export these tapes once they are full.

In regards to GFS media pool: you can use any media set within the GFS media pool and just adjust the overwrite protection period to the one you need. The media set itself shows how frequently virtual full backup can be set in the tape job properties.

[McClane]

Ah, almost a hidden feature, or I overlooked it in the docs.

I will have to calculate a little before I find the best solution between amount of tapes, fast restores and long term availibility of daily restore points.

Thx

[veremin]

Extensive information regarding GFS media pools can be found in the corresponding section of our User Guide. Should other help be needed, don't hesitate to ask. Thanks.

[PostBE]

Firstly thanks for V9 there looks to be heaps of improvements but there are a couple of features that I am unclear of and the GFS tape job is one of these.
I am wanting to use this but according to the manual or from what I understand this will not copy my weekly incrementals to tape just the full backup?
Can you clarify if this is the case as I obviously want to stream my full backup chain including incrementals to tape each week and not just the full backup.

Cheers.

[Dima P.]

Hello Dale,

Thank you for the feedback! That’s true - GFS Media Pool is all about full backups and long term retention. In order to keep the incrementals on tape, please use the simple media pool.

[PostBE]

Dima thanks for your reply that's a bit of a shame as it would have worked perfectly for me if it had processed incrementals...Maybe in version 9.1

[veremin]

Maybe in version 9.1

We tend to follow paradigm dictating that GFS restore points should be stored in the form of full backups without any dependencies between each other - the same way those points are created in case of backup copy job. Thus, the underlying technology staying behind tape GFS is virtual full backup allowing us to create full backups directly on tape mediums. Thanks.

[ekisner]

So a question, I do not see a way to create an incremental pool in the GFS. Which would be fine, I could have a second job for just the incrementals, but that requires that it do full backups as well (with incremental as an option).

How would one create an incremental-only tape job?

[Dima P.]

Hi Erik,

It’s true for now GFS media pools (and job targeted to the GFS media pool) supports full backup only. Can you clarify how long would you like to keep these incrementals in conjunction with GFS rotation schema? Thanks.

[cmaier]

Hi,

I impatiently waited for v9 because I want to finally send Backup Exec into Nivana. I still use Backup Exec for File to Tape Backups using a GFS scheme: 12 monthly and 10 weekly fulls combined with daily incrementals.

In Backup Exec I have 7 media pools:
- Saturday monthly (full) - for backups running on first Saturday of each month
- Saturday weekly (full) - for backups running on all other Saturdays
- Monday (incremental)
...
- Friday (incremental)

How can I do the same with Veeam B&R? Frankly, I don't understand the Veeam system of media pools.

GFS media pools are not enabled to File to Tape Jobs at all. But if they would - how could I handle the incremental backups?

[veremin]

Currently, GFS is only about creating full backups, not incremental ones.

Also, GFS media pool are only provided for backup to tape jobs, not for files to tape ones. So, it doesn't make a lot of sense to discuss how non-existing functionality should be setup.

Are you leveraging files to tape backup jobs? If so, you can try something like this to achieve GFS on tapes.

Thanks.

[cmaier]

You are right, but I expect to use backup to tape jobs later, too. So it would be interesting to discuss this anyway because the questions stay the same. The GFS media pools make no sense to me if they don't provide a solution for the daily incremental backups. I think there is no scenario where no incrementals are included in the backup chain. And there is no way to run incremental jobs without a full backup.

Are you leveraging files to tape backup jobs? If so, you can try something like this to achieve GFS on tapes.

Thanks, I will study you post.

[Dima P.]

Folks,
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. It seems that we have two similar discussions going separately, so I’ve merged all the posts into the single thread to keep track of the improvement requests.

cmaier,
So you would like to keep the incrementals in the weekly media set and overwrite it on a weekly basis is that correct?

[cmaier]

Hi Dima,

We have 4 of those media sets with a retention period of 4 weeks so we can rely on daily revisions of the user's files for about a month. After that we have weekly data for one quarter and monthly data for one year.

Our backup chain is like that:
- Saturday (1st): Monthly 1 (full)
- Monday to Friday: Monday 1 to Friday 1 (incremental)

- Saturday (2nd): Weekly 1 (full)
- Monday to Friday: Monday 2 to Friday 2 (incremental)

- Saturday (3rd): Weekly 2 (full)
- Monday to Friday: Monday 3 to Friday 3 (incremental)

and so on...

[ekisner]

Hi Erik,

It’s true for now GFS media pools (and job targeted to the GFS media pool) supports full backup only. Can you clarify how long would you like to keep these incrementals in conjunction with GFS rotation schema? Thanks.

The incrementals go to tape just in case we suffer a storage failure at our DR site. That way we still have incremental restores to meet RPOs for the week.

So to answer your question, the incrementals are kept for about 1 week by RPO, however in reality they generally stick around for about 2-2.5 weeks before they get overwritten. The media pool is about double the size it needs to be for an average week.

Edit:
Our GFS rotation looks (should look) like this:
Grandfather backups: Monthly, 1 year retention, full backup only, written on the last Saturday of the month (backup taken on last Friday of the month)
Father backups: Weekly, 4 week retention, full backup only (written on Saturday, backup taken on last Friday)
Son backups: Daily, 1 week retention, incremental only (incrementals from father backup above until next father job)

[Dima P.]

Hi guys,

For now it sounds like we should add fifth media set and call it daily to keep the incremental backup. May I ask what then supposed to be a schedule for backup to this media set – somewhat similar to ‘as a new backup file appear’ option or just daily at XX time of the day? Thanks.

[ekisner]

Personally I'd love to see an "as new backup files appear" option - a regular schedule would also be good, but that'd be my first choice.

[cmaier]

Both choices would be great but usually I use a simple daily schedule. And please open GFS media pools for file to tape jobs, too.

[mzamesnik]

Count me as one to request this sort of feature as well. We currently need to have daily incremental backups to tape with a 1-2 week retention. Currently, managing this with the regular media pools, because of our expanded GFS needs is a nightmare.

[bertdhont]

Hi all,

I'm testing GFS tape offload in our test lab, and I have some questions..

The setup:
1 backup job with some VM's, running Monday till Saturday (not on Sunday).Incremental backup, with an active full on Saturday.
Backup job starts on 6PM.

1 GFS Media pool With Weekly and Mothly tapes (no quarterly and yearly).

1 Tape job for GFS with weekly schedule on Sunday, and monthly the first Sunday of the month.

Test Results

So I have a full backup running on Saturday, and after that job, on Sunday 0:00 GFS Tape Offload starts.
As the last backup in the chain is a full backup, I thought Veeam would take that full restore point and put in on Tape (as this Sunday was the first Sunday of the month, a Monthly tape).

But what I see now, is that the tape offload job started on Sunday at 0:00, but It gives this messages:

Code: Select all

7/02/2016 0:00:10 :: Building source backup files list started at 7/02/2016 0:00 
7/02/2016 0:00:13 :: No GFS candidate for Monthly media set was found for today, waiting 

Very strange, because there is a VBK file that was created on 6/02/2016 6PM....
Then after 24h, I got this message:

Code: Select all

8/02/2016 0:07:27 :: No restore point for 7/02/2016 is available for virtual full backup, using previous restore point for 5/02/2016 

And then a virtual Full backup is created based on the latest incremental backup, the one of Friday evening...

So instead of using my active full bacup to create the GFS Tape, it creates a virtual full backup, based on the restore point created the day before the full backup...

What I would like

What I would like is a GFS tape job, where I can specify at what time it should start (not on 0:00 automatically), and that puts the latest backup on tape. If the latest backup on disk is a full backup, just take the VBK and put it on tape. If the last backup is an incremental backup, then create a virtual full backup and put this one on tape (but based on the LATEST backup)...

[veremin]

Hi, Bert,

Wasn't the GFS tape job added after active backup had been created on Saturday?

If not, the described behaviour doesn't look expected, as the latest restore point (in your case .vbk file) must have been archived to tapes.

Thus, we'd appreciate if you open a ticket with our support number. And post ticket's number here, once it's opened.

Thanks.

[bertdhont]

Opened Case # 01691640

[Max Dembo]

Hello,
I had a similar situation.
Daily backup to disk scheduled at 2/12/16 9 PM, reversed incremental, stopped successfully at 9.51 PM, new VBKs in the repository (per-vm backup files).
GFS backup (Weekly) started 2/13/16 at 00.00, stopped with warning after 24 hours, despite the presence of full backups.
From the Guide "The job starts at 00:00 at the scheduled day and waits for the source job to create a full backup. If no full backup appears in 24 hours, the GFS job synthesizes a virtual full backup from the most recent restore point available."
But if the vbk is already present I think that Veeam doesn't wait 24 hours.
What does it mean the warning "Partial backup detected for restore point created on".
I uploaded the job statistics here:
http://1drv.ms/1ObdPRr
Thanks!

[veremin]

Opened Case # 01691640

I have checked the case and it seems that the answer provided by our support engineer is slightly wrong. As the described behaviour is neither intended, nor expected. We'll keep investigating it further.

I had a similar situation.

Kindly, open your own case and make reference to the case number 01691640 and this thread.

Thanks.

[bertdhont]

Thanks Vladimir,

I've uploaded the logs of this weekend, where also something strange happened

[veremin]

Both support and QA teams are about to take a look at the provided logs. I'll update the topic should something interesting be found by them. Thanks.

[Max Dembo]

Hello,
Veeam v9, Case 01698894.
Daily backup to disk scheduled at 2/12/16 9 PM (friday), reversed incremental, stopped successfully at 9.51 PM, new VBKs in the repository (per-vm backup files).
GFS backup Weekly started 2/13/16 at 00.00 (saturday) , stopped with warning after 24 hours using the full backup created saturday night, despite the presence of full backups friday night.
From the Guide "The job starts at 00:00 at the scheduled day and waits for the source job to create a full backup. If no full backup appears in 24 hours, the GFS job synthesizes a virtual ful backup from the most recent restore point available."
Question 1:
By design a tape backup using GFS that starts saturday at 00.00, can use a full backups created friday night or can use only full backups created during the 24 hours of the scheduled day?
Question 2:
What does it mean the warning "Partial backup detected for restore point created on".
I uploaded the job statistics here:
http://1drv.ms/1ObdPRr
Thanks!

[veremin]

Max,

Kindly, avoid posting about the same issue in multiple discussions.

Can use a full backups created friday night?

This.

What does it mean the warning "Partial backup detected for restore point created on".

Meaning not all VMs present in source backup jobs have been copied to tapes. Sometimes we might throw this warning by mistake. (considered as a bug and will be fixed in Update 1)

Anyway, keep working with support engineer on addressing the said problem.

Thanks.