Backup Copy Job created new full (.vbk) backup file

[TacticalN8]

I have a backup copy job set to use a group of external hard drives that I rotate out weekly. This has been working well for the past year, but just last night I noticed that the backup copy job created a new full backup when it ran. Previously it would just run incrementals after the initial full was ran. I now see that there are 2 full (.vbk) files on that drive. Does this mean that something happened to the original .vbk file on that drive that damaged the chain?

[david.domask]

Hi @TacticalN8,

I wouldn't assume based on the description so far that there is corruption; a really fast test if you want to feel confident is run an Instant Recovery from the backups on the drive and just poke around a bit on your most important servers, see if anything is of or any restore errors.

As to why it made a new Full, too hard to say, it'll need a log analysis. You can check the Job log yourself and if it's one of the "expected" Active Full moments (changing block size, someone triggered it), you'll see it pretty plainly. Such messages should be right at the start of the log. But don't hesitate to open a support case and let the Engineers take a peek. Be sure to add logs from that job: https://veeam.com/kb1832. Use the first radio option, select the job in question, and once the export completes, upload the logs to your case. Support can act a lot faster when the logs are there right away

[TacticalN8]

Thanks for the response @david.domask

I actually did just open a support case and uploaded logs to have the Veeam support team take a look. One thing I noticed is that when I browse the drive via Windows explorer I can see the full and incremental backups, but when I right click the backup copy job from within the Veeam B&R application, and view the properties, it only shows me the 1 restore point, which is the full backup that it took last night. So I can't test the instant recovery using one of the older restore points.

I'll post another update once we get things ironed out with the support team. Thanks again.

[david.domask]

Happy to advise, and I'll peek in on the case if you post the case number here.

As for the behavior you saw when trying the test, this is expected in a sense. Veeam doesn't really check for rotated drive changes unless a job targeting the rotated drive repo is run; to overly simplify it, the only way Veeam knows about the drive change is by just going through all volumes on the repository server and looking for our expected path to the backup metadata; if we don't find it on the volume that was expected or if we find the metadata that tells this was a different drive, Veeam then updates the DB to show the restore points currently available.

Try just manually importing the VBK into Veeam and do an IR from that:

https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backu ... up&ver=120