Backup Copy Job - always incremental?

[TacticalN8]

I recently implemented Veeam B&R 11 and had a question regarding backup copy jobs. Right now I have an 8 TB external hard drive set as my default repository that my daily backup job backs up to. I'm doing full backups on Sunday's and then incrementals every other day of the week.

I also have a repository made up of rotating hard drives that I use to save my backup copy jobs to. So my daily backup backs up to the default repository, then my backup copy job copies to the rotating drive repository. When I look at the contents of my default repository hard drive, I see what I would expect. full backup files (.vbk) every Sunday, and then incremental backup files (.vib) every other day in between. My confusion comes when I browse the contents of one of the drives in my rotating drive repository. For those drives I only see one full backup .vbk file from the initial copy job, and then every other backup file is a .vib incremental file.

Is this normal behaviour? I was expecting to see at least 1 full backup file per week, like I do in the default repository. I want to ensure I don't run into any issues if I have to restore from the copy job.

Thanks in advance!

[Mildur]

Hi Nathan

Welcome to the R&D Forum.

Is this normal behaviour? I was expecting to see at least 1 full backup file per week, like I do in the default repository.

Yes, it looks as expected. A backup copy job creates an incremental backup copy instead of a full backup if there is already a backup chain of the copy job on the rotated disc.

https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backu ... ml?ver=110

Backup Copy Jobs
Backup copy jobs are performed in the following way:

1) Veeam Backup & Replication creates a regular backup chain on the currently attached drive.

2) When you swap drives, and the attached drive is empty, Veeam Backup & Replication creates a full backup on it. If there is a backup chain on the drive, Veeam Backup & Replication creates a new incremental backup and adds it to the backup chain. The latest incremental backup existing in the backup chain is used as a starting point for the new incremental backup.

3) [For external drives attached to Microsoft Windows servers] Veeam Backup & Replication checks the retention policy set for the job. If some backup files in the backup chain are outdated, Veeam Backup & Replication removes them from the backup chain.

Thanks Fabian

[TacticalN8]

Perfect, thanks for the information Fabian!