Active Full Per-VM backup?

[zoltank]

If I have a job set up to do Per-VM backup files, is it possible to run an Active Full backup on just one of those VMs, or can it only be done on all of them as a whole?

[veremin]

It's a job level setting, not a VM level one. So, it's performed against all VMs included in job. Thanks.

[Vitaliy S.]

However, there are some workarounds to run active full backup for a specific VM. For example, if you re-register this VM in the virtual infrastructure this will change its moref ID and all applications monitoring/backing up this VM will treat this VM as new one. This will force Veeam backup to do active full backup for this VM. I would not recommend doing it unless there is a very strong reason for the active full backup of this VM.

[tsightler]

I'm thinking you could get creative with Powershell as well, temporarily exclude everything except the VM you wanted, run active full, then put everything back.

You can also delete just the VM you want from the backup with the "delete from disk" option and the next run of the backup job will run a full for that VM while still being an incremental for all others. You can always copy the existing chain of backups to another storage prior to doing this if you want to keep the old backups.

Finally, you can also run a Veeam ZIP to an alternate location if your goal is to simply get a full of that VM separate from the rest of the chain, perhaps prior to maintenance or something.

[dellock6]

Once upon a time there was this script available:
https://vpowercli.wordpress.com/2012/01 ... -in-a-job/

I'm wondering if it still works, or it may just require a few changes to make it usable with v9...

Worth a try.
Luca

[tsightler]

I'm pretty sure that old script doesn't work, but if you look in the forum thread where this script started it has been updated over the years. Most recently there's this one for v8, which I'm guessing has a reasonable chance of still working with v9:
https://blog.smasterson.com/2015/02/06/ ... owershell/

However, all of these scripts have one critical issue, they only work when the VMs are added to the job individually so just keep that in mind.

[Helferlein]

Hi everyone.

This is a quite old thread, but it would actually be cool to have a right-click function to do a single VM active-full backup.

Veeam Team should consider this feature-request

[PetrM]

Hi Peter,

What about VeeamZIP?

Thanks!

[Helferlein]

It's not about to take a separate backup.

Sometimes... (well actually not really often) a VM does not backup well due to several reasons. And an active full will back it up well again.
So instead of doing a complete active full for the whole job it would be perfect to do an active full on selected VM's in the job...

[Andreas Neufert]

In theory you can exclude the other VMs in the Job settings and run an active full then. Potentially temporarly increase the restore point setting +1 so that you do not miss a restore point from the other VMs.

But I do not see how a Active Full will solve anything related to the backup.
If you want to just backup a specific VM again then there is QuickBackup:
https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backu ... ml?ver=100

[Helferlein]

Wow danke Andreas!

Kannte diese Funktion ja gar nicht.... Und ich arbeite ja schon wirklich lange mit Veeam.... Shame on me

[Andreas Neufert]

Gerne... This functionallity was exactly build with your usecase in mind (and to avoid manual snapshot processing when you work on VMs). Quick Backup is a very good replacement for any manual VMware snapshot (that you later forget to delete).

[PetrM]

However, Quick Backup is an incremental task which does not perform full VM backup.

Sometimes... (well actually not really often) a VM does not backup well due to several reasons. And an active full will back it up well again.

I'm wondering to know what kind of issue are you trying to resolve by running active full of the specific VM within the same job?

Thanks!

[Helferlein]

Well there were some times where the backup storage got disconnected from the network due to some outage and left running backupjobs inconsistent.
Then Veeam complains about some storage errors for example.
But this happened just a few times with some of our branch offices.
And when something like this happens most of the VM's in the backupjob are backedup correctly. Just a few with such storage errors.
In such case you can retry the incremental jobs forever and it does not help. Just a new active full job helps in such cases...
And since QuickBackup is incremental it seems that this wouldn't help neither....

[PetrM]

The purpose of full backup is to create an archive of entire data assets but not to resolve a technical issue.
I think Andreas's idea with exclusions is totally fine if you're seeking for a fast workaround or you can exclude temporarily a failed VM from a job and backup this VM by separate job.

By the way, looks like these two options might be helpful in the case you're talking about.

Basically, all errors and technical issues including the mentioned "storage" errors need to be investigated by support team so that you can get an appropriate solution.

Thanks!

[Andreas Neufert]

Important point, if a job did not completed all VM backups (error stage), you can right click on the job - Retry and it will only process the VMs that are not backed up completely. Same you can enable at the scheduler within the job wizard.