Backup Copy Job: Copy only Full Backups

[dropped91]

Hi,

I configured on our Branch Office a forever incremental Backup Job with Active Full on saturday (Every Saturday: Active Full; during the week: incremental)

Now I want to configure a Backup Copy Job to our Headquarters that runs on wednesday and copy ONLY the latest Full Backup. I don't need the incremental Backups at our Headquarters from the Branch Office.


How can I do that?

[dropped91]

Hi,

So if I outstood it right, I doesn't have any chance to ignore the incremenatal backups?


dropped91

[DGrinev]

Hi,

The backup copy job does not just copy, backup files, this feature creates a separate backup chain and copy most recent state of VMs from the source repository.
You can enable GFS retention in the backup copy job and configure it to keep weekly backups on Wednesday and retain as many as you need, also it is important to enable active full (select the “Read the entire restore point from source…” check box).

So if I outstood it right, I doesn't have any chance to ignore the incremenatal backups?

There is a possible workaround for you to use file copy job.

Thanks!

[ChuckS42]

I'm working this issue myself, in conjunction with a new Veeam Agent for Windows implementation. I have month-end backups that we keep for a year, and year-end backups we keep for seven years, for certain physical servers. I plan on creating these with Backup Copy Jobs. I plan to run the job once per month, with GFS retention set to keep 12 monthlies and seven yearlies. With this configuration,what should I see with regards to incrementals getting caught by the job? What should I set "Restore points to keep" to?

[DGrinev]

Hi Chuck,

You will see as many incremental files as you will set by simple retention policy.
For example, you set it to 7 restore points to keep with daily interval, then you will see 1 .vbk and 6 .vib backup files.
As for GFS retention policy it will retain monthly and yearly backups as you want it to.

You can set the backup interval to 30 days and retention policy to keep 2 restore points.
This way the copy job will move full backup on the initial run and one increment every 30 days followed by injection of previous one.
Retention of the regular chain is not that important since you need GFS restore points only.

Thanks!

[ChuckS42]

Hmm, one thing is that our monthly and yearly backups are to be done on a specific time and day of the month. In that case I'm not sure a 30-day backup copy interval will cover it, since not all months have 30 days.

[EugeneD]

Hello!
Is there any plans on making possible to disable simple retention policy with copy job settings? Or a setting to include only Full Backups to simple retention. Or both
My example: I backup VMs with regular backup jobs and since regular backup job has no GFS settings, I use Backup Copy Job with GFS settings to retain monthly, quarterly, yearly full backups and i simple does not need simple retention with Copy Backup Job. For me it is just waste of disk space (we do not have Data Domain & etc unfortunately).
May be it will be nice to be able turn on and off simple retention in GFS job.

[foggy]

Hi Eugene, for now, you can set simple retention in backup copy job to a minimum value of 2 restore points. The good news is that we're working on GFS for regular jobs.

[EugeneD]

Hi, foggy!
Yes, that news is good, but for now unfortunately Backup Copy Job starts every backup chain with full backup from Weeky/Monthly/Quarterly/Yearly and then continues that backup chain with daily incrementals. And setting two copies for daily makes no sense because no Full backup between weekly backups === no new backup chain and a pile of incrementals until new full backup. Backup Copy Job have no settings for periodic full for daily copy.

My test Backup Copy job settings:
Restore points to keep: 2
Checked: Keep the following restore points as full backups ...
Weekly: 4
Monthly: 0
Quarterly: 0
Yearly: 0
Checked: Read the entire restore point from source backup ...

Am I doing something wrong?

PS: My goal was to have a copy of weekly backups separeated from regular backup job and upload this copies to cloud storage with Scale Out Repository. For now the Scale Out repository does not upload Full backup if there is a chain of icrementals that depend on this full backup and a side effect of a pile of incrementals that i do not need.

[foggy]

If you clear the 'Read from source..." check box, restore points will be created synthetically on target and backup copy job will maintain the number of restore points in the chain specified in the simple retention setting ('Restore points to keep: 2').

[EugeneD]

Thanks, foggy, unchecking the 'Read from source..." check box worked and daily restore points are forever forward incremental now with its own backup chain.
Erlier I tried to make additional full backup with source backup job and I was thinking that thanks to 'Read from source..." check box Backup Copy job will take the full backup into daily backups but it does not.

As I see, Backup Copy Job with GFS is working this way:
If 'Read from source..." check box is checked then Weekly/Monthly/Quarterly/Yearly backups are taken from Full backups from source regular backup job and daily backups are synthesized as incrementals regardless of full backups in source backup job and regardless of numer of copies specified.

If 'Read from source..." check box is unchecked then daily backups are in forever forward incremental mode with specified number of copies, and there is one question: when the next weekly backup time will come, what will be the next weekly backup:
a) synthetic full restore point from previous synthetic dailys
or
b) full backup copied from source regular backup job taking to account that regular backup job will perform active full several hours before next copy job scan period.

I mean that like topic starter i want to retain "real" full backups for long term archiving purpose. This can be achieved with 'Read from source..." check box but we have problem with dailys.

[foggy]

Not actually as you described, please review this user guide section for the detailed explanation.

[EugeneD]

Hi, foggy!
Thanks for link to user guide. I will try to automatically change 'Read from source..." check box for than Backup Copy Job via powershell. The idea is to check it right before regular backup job weekly active full so backup copy job can copy active full backup and uncheck it next day for continuous dailys cleanup until next week.

[veremin]

In this case it might be easier to execute active full backup for backup copy job. Execute it once a week via PowerShell. Thanks!

[EugeneD]

Hello, Vladimir!
I think I've already tried this but incremental was created by Backup Copy Job. I will doublecheck Active Full for Backup Copy Job if my script will not work.

[hukay]

Sorry to bump old thread, but
@dropped91 what solution have you found for this? Im running into similar situation.

[veremin]

@hukay can you tell me whether the PS-workaround above works for you? Thanks!

[hukay]

Not familiar with executing via powershell @veremin

[veremin]

If I understand your goal correctly, you need to run active full backup for backup copy job on a some defined basis. In this case:

- within a script add Veeam PowerShell snap-in (to have access to Veeam-specific commands and classes)
- within a script get a backup copy job
- within a script run full backup for the backup copy job you got
- schedule a script via Windows Scheduler and set a desired schedule for it

Thanks

[ksheehanitw]

@veremin I am having a similar problem as described in this thread and have been trying to find a solution with support however thought you may be able to offer some help as your steps seem to almost fit my goal.

If I wanted to use the steps you suggested how should I configure the Backup Copy job Schedule and Copy Every settings?

My goal is to only have the job copy the latest Full Backup every 7 days to Rotated Media. I believe if I try using your steps the job will try and run when I dont want it to due to how the Copy Every setting is configured?

[veremin]

If I wanted to use the steps you suggested how should I configure the Backup Copy job Schedule and Copy Every settings?

I think it doesn't matter, as long as it's bigger than 7 days. The assumption is that active full will force backup copy job to run regardless of copy interval, but I don't have a lab to verify it right now.

Alternatively, you can enable/disable job within script before and after it starts.

Thanks!

[ksheehanitw]

@veremin Thanks for the reply, I tested this yesterday and found "Start-VBRJob" with -FullBackup parameter would not work and appeared to get stuck/hung in the PowerShell console.

After some digging I found the correct cmdlet to use is "Sync-VBRBackupCopyJob" with the -FullBackup parameter. When running this against a test job it worked as expected and created an Active Full Backup. Exert of script below for reference.

I also changed the Copy Every setting to 30 days to ensure it is above the 7 day schedule I plan to run the script on using Windows Task Scheduler.

When I force an Active Full Backup does this reset the Copy Every day/counter? For example if I manually force an Active Full backup today I expect Veeam will not try to copy again for another 30 days. Then if I force another active full in 7 days time does this 30 days countdown start again?

Code: Select all

Add-PSSnapin VeeamPSSnapin
Sync-VBRBackupCopyJob -Job "Tape Backup" -FullBackup

[foggy]

Correct, please review this user guide section for the Veeam B&R behavior upon manual synchronization in case of the copy interval that lasts several days.

[veremin]

Ah, I seem to have forgotten Sync-VBRBackupCopyJob cmdlet. Glad to hear that you haven't

Correct, forcing active full should reset the copy cycle of backup copy job.

Thanks!

[ksheehanitw]

Thanks both for the reply & link to section of the user guide. Bookmarked so I don't miss it in the future

[ryanmariano]

I would like to move only a weekly full backup created by the source job to another storage using backup copy job. Is this possible and doable? Thanks for the replies

[Maxim Karganov]

Hello Ryan and welcome to the forum!

Yes, this is doable with the help of GFS Retention Policy. Your topic was merged to the existing discussion - please take a look. Thanks.

[ryanmariano]

Hi Maxim,

Thank you for the quick response.

[ksheehanitw]

Just wanted to post a reply here in case anyone comes across this thread. After trying the above setup I was running into backup errors that after raising a support case was found to be caused by a new Backup Interval being started when the USB drive change occurs.

After a lot of trial and error with Veeam support we found a solution that achieves the end goal of copying a Full Backup to rotated media. We setup the USB Repositories as SMB shares because Instead of creating incremental backups, every time the drive is swapped the restore points on the offline disk are simply forgotten and will not be accounted when calculating retention. On a new drive, new full backup will be forced. The drawback is that if a drive with existing full backup comes back online, Veeam will not be aware of those points anymore and will simply restart the chain with an active full backup. It will be created right next to the previous full backup. It doesn't matter you won't be able to restore though - you can import the backup anytime. As you may imagine, sooner or later all "forgotten" points will fill up the drive and block the jobs. The workaround is described here: https://www.veeam.com/kb1154. I ended up using Option 5 for the registry change.

[foggy]

Hi Kyle, thanks for the update. Correct, with CIFS repositories Veeam B&R is not able to maintain the required retention on rotated drives (it is with the regular Windows repositories though).