Air Gapped rotated USB Drives config help

[GreenAlpha55]

We decided to implement an air gap solution utilizing 2 external USB hard disks. This is strictly for ransomware protection. Our plan is to have 2 weeks of air gapped backups at any one time, one external hard drive takes place on Monday, then the next takes place the following Monday. We want these external disks to be immediately disconnected after backup job completion (we will do this manually).

My solution is to run a powershell script that detects when 'ExternalDisk1' or 'ExternalDisk2' are plugged into our backup server. Once these drives are detected, the script will kick off the Backup Copy Job.

SO my question is, how do I configure the Backup Copy Job? It doesn't look like I can start the job manually, like you can with a Backup Job. BUT, I want to use a Backup Copy Job so that backup files are being pulled from our backup server and not our production VMware environment. ULTIMATELY, I'm looking for a powershell command to kick off the Backup Copy Job once.

Is this possible?

I noticed the Backup Copy Jobs have a periodic copy option. Is this an option for me? I'm worried with this option that I will have to time plugging in the hard drives precisely or the job will skip a beat.

[foggy]

Generally you do not need any scripts for disks detection - the backup copy will just run and backup to the disk that is currently inserted. It is even capable of maintaining the required retention on every single disk provided you're using the Windows repository. Or is your concern to prevent possible failures in case no disk is currently inserted? Kicking off backup copy synchronization via PS is also possible, you can ask for the exact syntax in the corresponding subforum. Thanks!

[GreenAlpha55]

@foggy, yes the issue I'm having right now is that since I'm currently running a continous backup copy job, when the disks are disconnected from the backup server and new points show up, we get a ton of failure email notifications.

[foggy]

You can then use the backup copy window setting to prevent the job from running when no disk is there or use the PS workaround.

[GreenAlpha55]

Make sense I will make that change.

How do i prevent multiple increments from processing? I only want the latest backup copy to processs. Currently if we don't plug the external drive in for 2 weeks it looks like it's processing 2 weeks of backups (the job completed multiple times). We have the minimum 2 restore points selected. I only need 1 backup on this external drive as it's for air gap only.

[foggy]

Backup copy creates a single increment within each copy interval. If the disk stays plugged in for two weeks, I assume you would like to have the latest possible VM state on this disk before detaching it, right?