A Question About Backup Configuration...

[Bob_Manning]

Hi,

I'm running Veeam B&R 9.5 (U4) on two environments, backing up an average of 680 VMs to 2 HPE StoreOnce arrays.

I have a question (we'll get to it shortly ) about backup configuration.

We use synthetic full backup with incrementals, with a monthly copy to tape. In all, there are approximately 170 separate backup scripts in place, and it's taken quite a bit of work to organize things the way we want them.

Following an incident a couple of months ago in which we experienced data corruption, analysis suggested that a periodic Active Full backup might also be a good idea, however I got the impression at the time that it might be better to run an Active Full in a separate job to the synthetics. This might simply have been for the purposes of resolving the support issue - I forgot to ask at the time.

I put an AF backup in place for our most critical server - one extra job, no problem. However a subsequent issue gave us to believe that backups we had previously believed unaffected by the corruption issue could not now be trusted, so I immediately implemented a set of Active Full backups for everything.

Happily, the backups were not compromised, but I now have nearly 340 separate backup scripts to manage.

My question (at last!) is simply this: Is it acceptable to have an Active Full backup in the same scheduled script as a Synthetic Full? Backup scripts would seem to accommodate such an arrangement, and it would be a big help if I could run the different types from the same process.

My plan would be to run an Active Full on perhaps a quarterly basis. If I were to schedule an AF backup for, say, the first Monday in March/June/Sept/Dec, would such a backup replace the scheduled synthetic in the same script?

I'm probably overthinking it, but I'd be grateful for any opinions and advice.

Thanks,

Bob

[HannesK]

Hello,
and welcome to the forums.

I don't know which issues you had before but in general there is no reason to have separate jobs for active / synthetic full backups. From my customers experience over the last years I tend to go with active full for StoreOnce systems. No synthetic fulls.

Is it acceptable to have an Active Full backup in the same scheduled script as a Synthetic Full?

yes

Best regards,
Hannes

[Bob_Manning]

Hi Hannes,

Thanks for the clarification - much obliged.

The problem we experienced came to light when a colleague attempted an FLR to our main file server but found that two mount points in the saveset were corrupted or unreadable.

Initially we believed that it was a CBT issue, since the backups appeared to be working normally and weren't reporting errors. Veeam Support recommended an Active Full backup to reset CBT, and this worked.

There turned out to be a wider issue (too long to go into here ) involving data storage corruption and stale snapshots, but we came to the conclusion that a periodic AF backup wouldn't be a bad idea, and here we are.

I'll go away now and work out a schedule for my active fulls, and see how we get on.

Cheers,

Bob