Backup Question

[ghines]

Hi all,

I'm new to Veeam and have a couple of questions I hope can be answered.

I have a laptop with W10 Home that gets used a couple of times a week, and I want to backup to an external USB HDD about once a week. The laptop usage frequency is very random. I've setup Veeam as follows:

Entire Computer
Local Storage
Keep Backups for 4 days
Create active full backup first Monday of the Month
Maintenance - Nothing checked
Data Compression - Optimal
Storage Optimization - Local target
Schedule - Nothing selected

Now this works just fine, except for one thing. If a backup is not done on the first Monday of the Month no active full backup is done and eventually the HDD will fill up.

What's the recommended approach under these circumstances to stop the HDD from filling up?

TIA

Greg

[Gostev]

Hi, Greg

From your description, this seems like a bug. Because if the selected day for Active Full backup was missed due to infrequent laptop usage, we should do an Active Full the next time backup job runs. By the way, do you have "Backup once powered on" option selected under daily backup settings?

Thanks!

[ghines]

The "daily at" option under Schedule is not selected hence the "Backup once powered on" option is not active.

[ghines]

Just to confirm the Active Full scheduled Backups are also not happening for the days of the week. eg: If Saturday is selected and the PC is not turned on until Sunday, the Active Full backup is not done. If however the PC is turned On on Saturday the Active Full backup is completed correctly.

Seems like all Scheduled Active Full Backups are only done on the exact day they are scheduled to be done. I would have thought if you missed the scheduled day it would happen the next day the PC was turned on after the scheduled date.

BTW - This has only been tested for doing manual backups via the Control Panel.

[ghines]

No ideas anyone?

TIA

Greg

[ghines]

we should do an Active Full the next time backup job runs.

Well, this is not happening. So can you confirm this is a bug and if so when a fix will be available.

TIA

Greg

[Gostev]

The "daily at" option under Schedule is not selected hence the "Backup once powered on" option is not active.

Well, that's the issue then as all these settings (include Active Fulls) apply to scheduled backups only. Thanks!

[ghines]

Well, that's the issue then as all these settings (include Active Fulls) apply to scheduled backups only. Thanks!

It still does not work with schedules.

File Level Backup
Local Storage
Keep Backups for 2 days
Create active full backup first Monday of the Month
Maintenance - Nothing checked
Data Compression - Optimal
Storage Optimization - Local target
Schedule - Daily, Everyday @ 3:30PM






The first Monday of July 2020 is the 6th. Scheduled Backup run on 7th July 2020 and no Active Full.

I'm testing this on a PC with Internet Time Sync disabled and manually advancing the date.

I would appreciate any help in how to make this work.

TIA

Greg

[Dima P.]

Hello Greg,

Active Full backup fully relies on the regular backup schedule of the backup job and if you do not have a job run for the active full date it wont be created. To achieve your goal please make sure that backup job will be running for the day set for Active Full. I agree that current logic must be improved and already noted an improvement request for the next versions. Cheers!

[ghines]

Well, at least I now know it's not a bug or me doing something wrong. And yes, the logic can be improved for the future.

So given my situation that the user users the laptop intermittently and they are not a technical person. What setup do you recommend to backup to an external USB HDD that will not eventually fill the HDD? I would like it so they just click on Backup Now and the program would do "its stuff" making sure the HDD is not filled.

Thanks for your input.

Greg

[ghines]

Given the lack of answers I can only conclude it's not possible for VAW to stop a HDD from filling up when only backing up on random days.

Thanks everyone, I guess it's time to look elsewhere. Shame really as I really liked this product.

Greg

[ddayton]

I set my wife's Windows 10 home laptop up with Veeam Windows Agent. The laptop has a 500GB hard drive and using an external WD 2TB USB drive. There are two obstacles. One is the laptop is not turned on 24x7 and two the USB drive is not always plugged in. The backup is setup to retry if the USB drive is not plugged in and Keep backups for 14 days. The schedule is daily at 9pm and if powered off I selected "Backup once powered on". This has been running for over a year and never filled the backup hard drive. My wife doen't like having the USB drive plugged, so she unplugs it and places in the desk drawer. Occasionally in the evening I plug it in and soon you see the activity LED blinking rapidly as the backup kicks off. If I examine the files on the USB drive and sometimes it's been more than 14 days since the USB drive was plugged in I see a full backup was performed once the drive was available.

[Dima P.]

Hello Greg, I am sorry for the delay!

What setup do you recommend to backup to an external USB HDD that will not eventually fill the HDD? I would like it so they just click on Backup Now and the program would do "its stuff" making sure the HDD is not filled.

I'd suggest to go with the default forever forward incremental backup mode - with such approach you can ensure that backup job will constantly merge existing restore points into full backup file without creation additional full backups.

To estimate the possible storage consumption you can count fist full backup as 50% of raw data you are backing up and every concurrent incremental restore point as 10%. Then you need to check the size of the tarted storage and make sure that desired retention works for your backup target.

Estimate example:

Volume is 100GB
Full backup would be 50GB
Incremental Backup would be 10GB
Retention is set to keep 10 days of backups
Resulting backup chain will be 140 GB (that's the amount of free spaced required on your backup target, plus I'd recommend to leave 10% of free space to make sure that backup job post processing operations run smoothly).

If I examine the files on the USB drive and sometimes it's been more than 14 days since the USB drive was plugged in I see a full backup was performed once the drive was available.

Don, are you sure that a vbk file is being created after you connect the USB drive? Can you please clarify if you have periodic full backup enable or maybe you are using other usb devices in conjunction with this usb drive? Cheers!

[ghines]

But, won't this eventually fill up the HDD. If no can you please explain why as I don't understand.

TIA

Greg

[Dima P.]

Greg,

When backup chain reaches it's length (i.e. the amount of restore points defined by retention) Veeam Agent for Windows starts to merge the oldest incremental restore point into full, removing all the data related to the outdated restore point. Simply speaking you have the following backup chain:

Full backup - Day 1 > Incremental backup - Day 2 > Incremental backup - Day 3 and retention is set to 3 days of successful backups

On the Day 4 new incremental backup will be created while the data from the Day 1 will be pushed away by the incremental for the day 2 and, as a result, the space consumed by the data for the first day of backup will be reused by the next incremental backup.

Full backup - Day 2 > Incremental backup - Day 3 > Incremental backup - Day 4

Hope it helps, cheers!

[ghines]

Yes, it does and thank you. But my understanding is that as the incremental backups are moved into the full backup the full backup will increase in size which will eventually fill up the HDD. Or am I missing something?

TIA

Greg

[Dima P.]

You are welcome! During the merge processes, when incremental backup is injected into full backup, retired blocks are overwritten by new data. As a result full backup never keeps old data and prevents your storage from being flooded with unnecessary data.

[ghines]

Fantastic, thank you for all your time and explanation.

Greg