Active Full schedule with GFS

[HDClown]

Consider a backup job as follows:

• incremental mode
• job runs once a day
• 31 days retention - GFS with 4w, 15m, 3y
• SOBR repo with capacity tier set to "copy to object as soon as created" and "move backups to object older than 31 days"

What would a general best practice on when to schedule an Active Full. Let's not consider business requirements in this question, I'm just looking at this from a technical standpoint, as well as space optimization standpoint in the repo.

Would the recommendation change between V11 and V12? The docs talk about GFS schedule changes from V10 to V12, so not clear if V11 uses thes same behavior as V12.

[Mildur]

Hi HDClown

V11 and V12 have the same GFS schedule for backup and backup copy jobs.

What would a general best practice on when to schedule an Active Full. Let's not consider business requirements in this question, I'm just looking at this from a technical standpoint, as well as space optimization standpoint in the repo.

Doing Active Full backup instead of Synthetic Full backups is recommended for SMB/NFS repositories or Dedup appliances. With reFS or XFS based repositories, you can benefit from doing fast and space less Synthetic Full backups.
If you trust your storage (stable, enterprise raid controller, battery write cache) you don't necessary require Active Full backups. Having additional copies of your backup also provides you with additional safety against data loss through bad storages.

SOBR repo with capacity tier

Active Full backups to performance tier will have no effect for capacity tier offload. Only unique blocks will be offloaded to the capacity tier. If you schedule an active full to the performance tier, Veeam will analyze those full backup and compare it to objects already in the capacity tier. Only new blocks from that active full backup file will be copied to capacity tier.

Best,
Fabian

[HDClown]

If you trust your storage (stable, enterprise raid controller, battery write cache) you don't necessary require Active Full backups.

In my scenario, I am using GFS, so isn't there a need to have active or synthetic full for chain sealing? When you enable GFS it has a triangle warning that says "Enable periodic fulls, or schedule a script to create them".

I'm perfectly fine with only a monthly Active Full (instead of weekly), but not certain if that will cause an issue with my weekly GFS? Does the day the Active Full is run have any impact relative to the GFS schedule and possibly using extra storage on the performance tier?

[Mildur]

In my scenario, I am using GFS, so isn't there a need to have active or synthetic full for chain sealing? When you enable GFS it has a triangle warning that says "Enable periodic fulls, or schedule a script to create them".

Yes, you must enable regular active full or synthetic full for your job. You can do that in step "Storage" with the "Advanced" button: https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backu ... ml?ver=120

I'm perfectly fine with only a monthly Active Full (instead of weekly), but not certain if that will cause an issue with my weekly GFS? Does the day the Active Full is run have any impact relative to the GFS schedule and possibly using extra storage on the performance tier?

You can do monthly active fulls and weekly synthetic fulls.
Please note that an Active Full backup will always require the entire space. Synthetic Full backups can use FastClone if your storage fullfills the requirement. Please share some information on your backup repository (type, filesystem, ...) and expected backup full backup size. This allows me to make an assumption of required backup storage.

You can also use our calculator yourself:
https://calculator.veeam.com/vbr/

Best,
Fabian

[HDClown]

My performance tier isn't the greatest, it's Synology NAS with WD Gold (Enterprise) SATA drives in RAID10. I have been doing weekly synthetic full but I am wanting to move away from them. In the testing I have done, I can run an Active Full in anywhere from 1/3 to 1/4 LESS time than it takes the synthetic fulls to run on my larger jobs. I'm not concerned with the additional read I/O against the production storage by doing active full.

So, if I'm only going to be running do active full, with my GFS retention in mind, do I need to run weekly active full to not cause issues with GFS, or would monthly active full be adequate?