Virtual Synthesized Full Backup for Tape process

[emel]

I am running VB&R 8.0.0.917.

I must be missing something in how the Virtual Synthesized Full Backup for Tape process works. Reading the forums and talking support have only confused me further.

I run a standard 'Forever Incremental' with a 30 day retention. For offsite storage and archival purposes I use tapes in a StorageLoader.

My archival GFS rotation is pretty standard. Daily are retained a week, weeklies are retained a month, monthlies are retained a year, and yearlies are retained indefinitely.

My goal is to obviously have fulls on the weekly, monthly and yearly tapes, with incrementals Monday through Thursday.

Initially I created a single media pool with 1 week retention. I created a Backup to tape job where I scheduled a full Virtual Synthesized Full to run each day and of course I checked off "Process incrementals". I set both full and incrementals to run to the one media pool. This way, I had a full on each tape for taking offsite (including weekdays). That was my intent: the less tapes to drag around the better.

Week 1 seemed to run ok, but this week I ran into the issue where the .vbk from week 2 was written to tape along with week 1, similar to the issue brought up in http://forums.veeam.com/tape-f29/writin ... 25750.html.

I reworked my setup after that a bit. I created a "full" media pool (1 month retention) and an "incremental" media pool (1 week retention). I scheduled the Backup to tape job to run Virtual Synthesized Full Backup on Friday (so I have a weekly full) and then of course the incrementals would copy to tape on weekdays. The goal would be that the weekly full would be retained a month (so January week 1 would be retained and used as February week 1) and the incremental would be retained a week (so my Monday tape is reused the following Monday).

I have spoken with Support but only managed to confuse myself further on how this works and how I can ensure the corrrect vbk (and only one vbk!) and vibs are backed up to tape. I was hoping someone could help clarify this for me a bit and tell me if I am on the right track or whether I should be doing something completely different.

Thank you.

[veremin]

I created a Backup to tape job where I scheduled a full Virtual Synthesized Full to run each day and of course I checked off "Process incrementals".

In order for Synthesized full to work "Process incrementals" option should be enabled.

Initially I created a single media pool with 1 week retention.

Source backup job has longer retention, than target tape job has. As the result, medium containing previous backup got overwritten, even though that backup was still present on disk. As the result, during its next cycle a backup to tape job tried to cope that .vbk again, because tape catalogue didn't have a reference to it.

You can either increase retention on media pool level or re-create a backup to tape job, making it copy only portion of a chain starting from the latest full backup.

Thanks.

[emel]

To clarify, I meant to say "Process Incrementals" is enabled.

This is where I am confused. I am not sure why it is copying the original full. By definition isn't the Virtual Synthesized Full .vbk synthesized from the full at the beginning of the chain plus the .vibs (incrementals) as referenced in a vsb? At least that's how I read the documentation. Why would is copy the Full plus the Synthesized Full?

You can either increase retention on media pool level

If I set the retention policy for 30 days on both my Forever Incremental Backup Job (to repository) and my "Full" media set of for the Backup to Tape Job, I should not encounter this issue for any for Virtual Synthesized Full, correct?

Not that I really want to, but theoretically if I were to set 30 days of retention on both and recycled tapes every 30 days, I shouldn't encounter this issue?

re-create a backup to tape job, making it copy only portion of a chain starting from the latest full backup.

I'm not sure I understand this part. How would you copy only a portion of the chain? With Forever Incrementals that would be the .vbk plus 30 .vibs, no?

Lastly, would I be better off with a Reverse Incremental and just running that full backup at the end of the backup chain to tape? Are there disadvantages to that? Slower speed is documented as a disadvantage but my environment is small enough that it's not a concern.

Thank you again.

[veremin]

This is where I am confused. I am not sure why it is copying the original full. By definition isn't the Virtual Synthesized Full .vbk synthesized from the full at the beginning of the chain plus the .vibs (incrementals) as referenced in a vsb? At least that's how I read the documentation. Why would is copy the Full plus the Synthesized Full?

Currently, during initial cycle backup to tape job will not only create a synthesized full backup, but also try to copy .vbk/.vibs files present on disk. We might change this logic slightly in the next product updates/releases, though.

As to my proposals, I thought you had some previous .vbks present inside repository (like ones you can have if you switch from ordinary forward incremental mode, etc.) and gave recommendations in accordance. Now, I see that it's not the case, so you can simply disregard them.

Thanks.

[emel]

There are other vbk's from other jobs, both old and new, from unrelated jobs. Do I need to delete any vbks other than the vbk from the forever incremental?

[veremin]

No, you don't need to it. You can simply re-add backup jobs to a backup to tape job and make latter copy only the latest chain ("Selecting Backup Chains to Archive"). Thanks.