I have never really managed to get my head around Veeam's 'backup copy job'. We basically would like to perform a second backup to another building on site (I started a thread about this a while back) - this I imagine would be perfect for this.
It is my understanding that the backup job runs continuously. Does this mean that the 'backup copy job' copies across data from the main backup the instant the main backup has completed?
If the above is true, I don't understand the setting where you specify how often the backup copy job runs. For example, you can set it to run 'once every day' starting at '01:00'. How can the job run 'continuously' but also once every day at a given time? I feel that this is a bit of a contradiction.
I mainly would like to use our 'backup copy job' to archive backups e.g. once a week, once a month, a year etc etc... which this supports, so brilliant. But with this in mind, there is no point in me keeping up-to-date restore points in the secondary backup. However, Veeam will not let me keep any fewer than two. I would like this to be zero and just have the 'archival backups'. This is 4TB of storage being taken up on our secondary NAS. Is there a way to make this zero?
With the above point in mind, I have set 'restore points to keep' as two (since I can't set it any lower). On Sunday, I enabled the 'backup copy job' and it copied across our backup successfully... so we now have one restore point. I expected after last nights backup, since the job runs continuously and it is set to keep two backups, that a second restore point would be created. But it hasn't done. I still only have one restore point and it looks like the backup copy job didn't run last night. Any reasons for this?
So basically, it seems to me that there are a lot of conflicting settings in the 'backup copy job'.... or I just don't understand it properly!! (I'm sure it is the latter). I basically just want to archive my backups using GFS to a secondary NAS..... and this job doesn't seem to be making it very easy.
It is my understanding that the backup job runs continuously. Does this mean that the 'backup copy job' copies across data from the main backup the instant the main backup has completed?
Yes, backup copy job runs continuously, but it copies just a single restore point within each sync interval.
nick3young wrote:
I mainly would like to use our 'backup copy job' to archive backups e.g. once a week, once a month, a year etc etc... which this supports, so brilliant. But with this in mind, there is no point in me keeping up-to-date restore points in the secondary backup. However, Veeam will not let me keep any fewer than two. I would like this to be zero and just have the 'archival backups'. This is 4TB of storage being taken up on our secondary NAS. Is there a way to make this zero?
No, this is how transform works while applying retention settings in backup copy job. Having additional restore point ensures at least one restore point remains valid in case of the failure. Remember, only the first restore point in the regular chain is full, all the subsequent ones are increments.
nick3young wrote:
With the above point in mind, I have set 'restore points to keep' as two (since I can't set it any lower). On Sunday, I enabled the 'backup copy job' and it copied across our backup successfully... so we now have one restore point. I expected after last nights backup, since the job runs continuously and it is set to keep two backups, that a second restore point would be created. But it hasn't done. I still only have one restore point and it looks like the backup copy job didn't run last night. Any reasons for this?
Most likely the new interval is not started yet. What are the settings for the "Copy every" interval?
Ok, the 'sync interval' kind of makes sense to me. Do you not think it would make more sense to base the interval on the main backups as opposed to a time slot? e.g. once every backup or once every 3 backups? What would be the point of having an interval of 30 minutes?
My interval is set as 1 day starting at 00:00. I started the copy job Sunday evening and it did overlap into the early hours of Monday morning.... so I think you're correct on the new interval not starting yet assuming it doesn't reset until the END of the backup as opposed to the START of it.
Good point on the incremental restore points. This leads to another question though: when Veeam performs the archival backup, does it perform this as a fresh, separate backup? I was assuming that it simply archived one of the restore points created from the backup copy job itself. Does that make sense?
nick3young wrote:Ok, the 'sync interval' kind of makes sense to me. Do you not think it would make more sense to base the interval on the main backups as opposed to a time slot? e.g. once every backup or once every 3 backups? What would be the point of having an interval of 30 minutes?
Definitely no point in setting interval that is shorter than your original backup cycle. Having it as a time slot allows you to have different independent retention for both jobs.
nick3young wrote:Good point on the incremental restore points. This leads to another question though: when Veeam performs the archival backup, does it perform this as a fresh, separate backup? I was assuming that it simply archived one of the restore points created from the backup copy job itself. Does that make sense?
Yes, each GFS restore point is a separate full backup file. Please review how GFS works in backup copy.
The backup copy job still hasn't run again. It's status is 'idle' and it's current action is 'waiting for the new copy interval'.
The copy interval is definitely set as every 1 day at 00:00. The last creation time of a snapshot was 21/02/2015 at 05:37..... surely we should be in the new copy interval now?
If you have new restore points created by the source backup job in the source repository and backup copy job still does not do anything, please contact technical support for investigation.