Backup Copy to QNAP NAS

[mdmd]

HI All,

IN light of the cryptolocker virus and other nasties floating around, as we do not follow the 3-2-1 rule, we decided to add another place to copy our backups too.

Ive tried to read a lot of stuff but getting a bit confused, some people say use NFS, some say use SMB.

Our scenario is this :
Veaam Backup & R
Main server - Reverse Incremental backups - 60 day retention - On Local attached storage

So the logic behind the Qnapp is to do a Backup Copy of the last 3 backups (that's possible yes with reverse incremental?) to the Qnapp not on our domain, that none of the domain admins have access too, would this be best done via SMB, with a \\server\Share and create a local only account, which saves in the encrypted Veeam database?

I don't know if it makes a difference between which methods, but the Qnapp is connected at 10GB

Thanks in advance

Mike

[Shestakov]

Hi Mike,

So the logic behind the Qnapp is to do a Backup Copy of the last 3 backups (that's possible yes with reverse incremental?)

Yes it is, but once you decided to use backup copy job, it`s better to change the source job backup method to forward incremental (or forever forward), since backup copy by its design works alike forever forward method.
Thanks!

[mdmd]

Thanks for the reply, I have to be honest, ever since using veeam I've always ever ran Reverse incremental and its worked great for us.

So forward incremental would be incremental with synthetic full every week, I'm a bit unsure on the best practices now my setup has changed. (cant even see an option for forever forward)

Also if I change all my jobs to Forward incremental, what would happen to the reverse incremental backups already created? Would they stay and just start taking incrementals or be deleted?

Thanks again

[Shestakov]

If you switch from reverse to forward, VBR will just start new forward chain with the VBK you have. Existing restore points will only be deleted by retention.
If you don`t feel comfortable switching to forward from reverse, you may keep using reverse, it will work with no issue, just a bit slower. I would give it a try.

[mdmd]

Great, ill let you know how we get on, as we keep 60 restore points and some servers are 1TB plus, I would think in a forever incremental, 1 VM + 60 points may take a long time to restore,

Will have a play about with some smaller backup sets though.

[Shestakov]

If you have same number of restore points and full backups, it still take time to restore from the 60-long chain for both forward and reverse. In case of reverse it would take time to restore from the older points, in case of forever forward, from newer ones.
Smaller sets make sense. Usually majority of restores(~95%) happen from the last 1-2 weeks, so the best practice is to have short chain on the primary storage and bigger one on the secondary one, the target of backup copy job. You might also be interested in GFS retention option.