Weekly full backup copy of 2 physical file servers (VAW)

[omfk]

Hello,

I'm struggling with the following issue. I have two physical file server (each ~2TB data) which are backed up daily to our VBR server using VAW Free (14 days retention). On the VBR server I have 2 backup copy jobs which copies the new files to our FreeNAS repository. That works fine.

Now I want to have during the night Wednesday/Thursday a full backup of both servers onto an external USB 3.0 HDD. Ideally I want to use 2 HDD (even and odd week). Who can I achieve that there will be a full backup (and the containing the latest changes)? I understand from reading other posts that achieving full backups with backup copy isn't possible. Due to the fact that VAW is using forever incremental I also can't use file copy and copy the latest vbk.

What options are available?

BR
Frank

[PTide]

Hi,

You can stick with "Rotated drive" option so whenever you attach an empty drive then there will be Full backup shipped to the drive.

Thanks

[Dima P.]

Frank,

I'd recommend to try Standalone full backup to another location option. It creates a full backup to the location of your choice, can be scripted (via Task Managed and cmd command) and uses the backup scope from you backup job configuration. The only thing you should keep in mind - these backups are not affected by retention, so you might need to delete them manually.

P.S. Should be configured on the agent side.

[omfk]

Frank,

I'd recommend to try Standalone full backup to another location option. It creates a full backup to the location of your choice, can be scripted (via Task Managed and cmd command) and uses the backup scope from you backup job configuration. The only thing you should keep in mind - these backups are not affected by retention, so you might need to delete them manually.

P.S. Should be configured on the agent side.

Unfortunately that's not a practical approach as one server is at a remote office with only a "slow" connection. I need something which works from the B&R repositories at the main office. I'll make some more tries tomorrow.

BR
Frank

[omfk]

Hi all,

I've started a backup copy job which should copy the backup files of the two affected servers from our VBR server to an attached USB 3.0 external hard drive using the "sync now" button. That works.

Unfortunately the copy speed is rather slow:-( The summary says 30MB/s (780GB in 8h).

The transfer window at the side displays spikes followed by several minutes without any displayed activities. When I look at the memory consumption on the VBR server I see saw tooth function (max 15GB, min 8GB ) The VBR server is a ProLiant ML310e Gen8 v2 (Xeon E3-1220 v3 @3.10GHz) with 16GB RAM. The external hard drive is connected to an USB 3 port.

Any options to improve the transfer speed? At the moment I can't finish the copy job with 24h:-(

BR
Frank

[Dima P.]

Frank,

Please share the bottleneck stats for this backup copy job. Thanks!

[omfk]

As the job isn't finished yet, I can't give you the exact values.

It starts with Bottleneck: Source (during the first minutes) and now it states Bottleneck: Target

BR
Frank

[omfk]

Hi Dima,

the job has finished but was stopped several times due to new backups "16.09.2017 00:11:04 :: Source restore point is locked by another job". So I have to get faster.
machine one:
16.09.2017 11:38:34 :: Busy: Source 21% > Proxy 33% > Network 21% > Target 77%

machine two:
16.09.2017 04:09:51 :: Busy: Source 18% > Proxy 32% > Network 18% > Target 80%



The image below show the transfer activities during the first hours.


Is there any option to get rid of the periods of non-activities? Would it be a better idea to make a backup copy job for each machine separately?

Veeam Essentials
source backups on internal HDDs
backup copy onto one USB 3.0 HDD

BR
Frank

[omfk]

Hi all,

any ideas for improvement?

BR
Frank

[Dima P.]

Hello Frank,

I am sorry for keeping silence, looks like I somehow missed this thread. Can you provide the details on your USB drives (i.e. model and hard disk)? Additionally, I’d recommend you to open a support case regarding VBR’s backup copy. Support folks can check the logs and identify the root case even better.

[omfk]

Case # 02325026

The USB drives are 4TB external drives from WD (107C or 25A3)
https://www.amazon.de/Western-Digital-E ... B00JT8AJZ0

BR
Frank

[omfk]

Update:
The disks were only running at ~30MB/s when testing with diskspd. I reinstalled the USB3 driver (it is a 2008R2 machine) and afterwards the tests were running with ~100MB/s. After that also the backup copy jobs run at ~100MB/s.

Problem solved!

[Dima P.]

Good result and thanks for sharing the solution with us! Cheers.