Backup copy for GFS only

[cookiejc]

Hi, I am using Copyjobs for the first time to hopefully move our organisation away from tape.. I'd like to use a Copy job to point to an existing backup job and simply keep 6 x Weekly restore points and 24 x monthly to ensure we have 6 weeks of weeklies and 2 years of monthlies available on our storage appliance.

I am confused that on top of the "Keep the following restore points for archival purposes" option within the copy job it is also asking me to define "Restore points to keep" with a minimum value of 2. I only want to keep the weekly and monthly restore points within the copy job

Can anyone help explain this? I'm sure it's just me not understanding the options.

Many thanks

[veremin]

I believe the combination of following options should give you what you're after:

- Copy every: 7 days
- Restore Points to keep: 2
- Weekly backup: 6
- Monthly backup: 24
- Read the entire restore point from source: enabled

Thanks.

[Shestakov]

I would also suggest scheduling weeklies and monthlies on the same day of week, so you ahve a single backup file marked as weekly and monthly to avoid duplication.

[cookiejc]

Thank you both for your replies. The settings makes sense to be although i'm still confused as to why I need to set a Restore points to keep setting. For instance I have just created a copy job to perform a Monthly tomorrow morning as a test. As soon as I created the job it started making a copy of the backup job when actually I just want it to do the monthly backup tomorrow

Is this by design?

[Shestakov]

Yes, these 2 retention settings are independent in terms of number of restore points to keep, but you still need it to be set. The minimal number is 2.
That`s by design.
Check the corresponding topic for more info. Thanks!

[foggy]

The settings makes sense to be although i'm still confused as to why I need to set a Restore points to keep setting.

It is a regular part of the backup copy job.

[cookiejc]

Ok thank you, I think I get it but will re read those links again to make sure. I'd rather the option to turn the simple retention off for a copy job as we have no requirement for it. We have the backup job itself to keep our daily restore points we only want the copy job to keep Weekly / Monthly and maybe Yearly.

I have a related question but feel free to tell me to post separately. My deployment consists of a Veeam Management virtual machine and 4 x Physical proxies. When I run copy jobs I notice the NIC is heavily utilized on the Veeam management server. Ideally I only want to use this server for management and no data transfer which is what the physical machines are for. I tried setting the gateway in the repository for the backup job to specify one of the physical servers but then I see LAN traffic on both!

Any ideas how I can control this?

Thanks again

[foggy]

What are your source and target repositories - how they are added to Veeam B&R console?

[cookiejc]

The source and targets are separate CIFS/SMB shares on a Netapp Altavault appliance. I'd like a physical proxy to handle the data transfer both from and back to the storage appliance if possible rather than the VM getting involved

[foggy]

Then you need it to be specified as a gateway server for both repositories.

[cookiejc]

Ok thank you, alternatively is there a way to remove the VM from the list for automatic selection for gateway server? I have 4 physical servers which could be used rather than having to manually select just one

[veremin]

Nope, you cannot move a particular added server from automatic selection. So, in your case it still makes sense to specify one particular server manually. Thanks.

[cookiejc]

Thanks... this seems a bit restrictive. If i have 4 x Physical proxies and i set the Gateway for repository 1 to be proxy 1. Does that mean a backup job which uses Proxy 2 is going to send the data to proxy 1 to then be sent to the storage appliance?

Wouldnt it make more sense for each proxy to be able to write directly to our NAS device?

[foggy]

Does that mean a backup job which uses Proxy 2 is going to send the data to proxy 1 to then be sent to the storage appliance?

Yes.

Wouldnt it make more sense for each proxy to be able to write directly to our NAS device?

For that you can create 4 repositories on the same storage with a dedicated physical server as a gateway server and distribute your jobs among them.

[cookiejc]

Thank you for the information. I have several copy jobs running now and I have read a lot of the forums posts and guides. My new copy jobs are configured to keep a monthly on the last sunday of the month. They ran for the first time this morning, I was expecting them to create a new backup chain due to the simple retention of 2 restore points but for some reason every job has created a full backup file with a _M appended to the name which I assume is for monthly. I am confused that my GFS settings state are set to perform the monthly on the last sunday of the month why has is created one today?

[Shestakov]

Hi!
When did you create the job itself? My suggestion is you created it in April but haven`t started it until today and VBR thinks the job is missing the last month GFS point.
Thanks!

[Shestakov]

Talked to QA team, they are also interested if you enabled Read the entire restore point from source backup instead of synthesizing it from increments check box and what is the name of the created full backup with _M index?
If the name contains the set up date, the job works as expected.
Thanks!

[cookiejc]

Hi, no I created the jobs yesterday. The file name for one of them as an example is this: "File Servers - Bronze - Archive2016-05-09T060000_M.vbk" The copy every setting on the job was 30 days at 0600

Yes I did enable the read the entire restore point from source backup setting as I am using a dedupe appliance as the source and target

Appreciate you looking into this

[Shestakov]

Thanks for the reply.
The behavior looks like a bug, so could you contact Veeam support please?