Backup strategy and scheduling

[blabarbera]

Hello,
I am currently using B&R 7.0.0.839 and I've got a few questions I'm hoping I can get some advice/help with.

In the past when using products like Backup Exec I have always created a separate job for monthly backups and given it its own schedule. I've noticed that in Veeam I have the option to include active full backups as part of my standard daily backup job and assign a different schedule (i.e. last/first day of each month). My question is if the retention policy for the job is applied the same way to the active fulls as it is to the restore points I set it to keep. For instance, if I set the job to keep 10 restore points for each VM, is one of those restore points going to be an active full backup, and what happens to the active full backups as restore points are cleaned up over time?

The reason I ask is because I want to create a monthly backup job, and I'm wondering if I can accomplish this all in one job, or if I should create an additional job with it's own settings/schedule?

Also, in playing around with the schedule I've noticed that it doesn't seem to apply a monthly schedule. For instance, if I set the job to run on the last Sunday of each month, the job still schedules itself for every Sunday of the month. Right now I have a monthly job setup with this setting but it's been running every Sunday for the last two/three weeks even though it should only be running on the last sunday of the month. Am I doing something wrong here?

[Vitaliy S.]

Hi Brian,

My question is if the retention policy for the job is applied the same way to the active fulls as it is to the restore points I set it to keep. For instance, if I set the job to keep 10 restore points for each VM, is one of those restore points going to be an active full backup, and what happens to the active full backups as restore points are cleaned up over time?

Retention policy is applied to the entire backup chain. Once given restore point (full or increment) falls out of the retention period, it is deleted from the repository.

The reason I ask is because I want to create a monthly backup job, and I'm wondering if I can accomplish this all in one job, or if I should create an additional job with it's own settings/schedule?

Yes, you can accomplish this with a single job.

Also, in playing around with the schedule I've noticed that it doesn't seem to apply a monthly schedule. For instance, if I set the job to run on the last Sunday of each month, the job still schedules itself for every Sunday of the month. Right now I have a monthly job setup with this setting but it's been running every Sunday for the last two/three weeks even though it should only be running on the last sunday of the month. Am I doing something wrong here?

What backup mode do you have configured for the backup job? Are you using forward incremental backup mode? Do you have synthetic full backup scheduled by any chance?

Thanks!

[blabarbera]

Ok, but I forgot to add one thing - I want to keep all of my monthly full backups. If the retention policy is applied to entire backup chain then it doesn't sound like I can do that, unless I am misunderstanding something.

For instance, I have my daily backup set to occur everyday at 11pm and keep 10 restore points. I want to keep each monthly backup and set the monthly's to expire after 12 months. It doesn't seem I can do this using the retention policy unless I set it to a crazy high number, and then I'm going to keep a lot of other backups that I don't need.

As for the backup mode - it's set to Incremental with synthetic fulls occurring each Saturday.

[Vitaliy S.]

Ok, but I forgot to add one thing - I want to keep all of my monthly full backups. If the retention policy is applied to entire backup chain then it doesn't sound like I can do that, unless I am misunderstanding something.

In this case you will need a separate backup job. If you want to store all monthly backups and don't stress your production VMs with another snapshot, I would suggest using backup copy jobs. These jobs pull VM image out of the existing backup files and have a separate retention policy, that will allow you to achieve what you're after. For the backup copy job configuration, you will need to set "Copy every" interval to 30 days. This will create a backup restore point on monthly basis.

As for the backup mode - it's set to Incremental with synthetic fulls occurring each Saturday.

This explains why you see another backup running every weekend:

Also, in playing around with the schedule I've noticed that it doesn't seem to apply a monthly schedule. For instance, if I set the job to run on the last Sunday of each month, the job still schedules itself for every Sunday of the month.

[blabarbera]

Thanks for the info. I had an "aha" moment as soon as you asked about the synthetic fulls.

Question - Can the source and target for the backup copy job be the same repository?

[foggy]

It can be technically the same physical server, but different folders. Backup copy job has an inbuilt mechanism preventing it from looking restore points in the repository that is specified as backup copy job target.

[blabarbera]

Thanks for all the help.