Best practices for reverse incremental

[redhorse]

Hello,

I read a lot of stuff about getting the best backup strategy for ESX-VMs with Veeam but I can't find the right solution for our Situation. So let me explain:

We use Veeam to backup about 25 VMs with Direct SAN Access and at this time we use daily reverse incremental with active full backup on sunday. The backup repository goes to tape from monday to saturday with backup exec 2010 by full backup (no incremental or differential). That means:

Sunday: Active full backup
Monday: reverse incremental
Tuesday: reverse incremental
...
Saturday: reverse incremental
Sunday: Active full backup
Monday: reverse incremental

I would like to have about 30 restore points on disk but with that backup plan we would have more than one full backup (.vbk) on disk. Isn't it possible to transform the last .vbk-file to .vrb after creating a new active full backup? Currently we have only two restore points on disk to have only one full file on tape on monday.

Perhaps someone has the right idea for me?

[Vitaliy S.]

Hello,

That's not possible, but you can either run active full once a month, or switch to forward incremental backup mode and configure your job to create synthetic full with transform once a week.

Thank you!

[veremin]

As mentioned above, with reversed incremental mode the need for performing active full backup isn’t that strong; it’s considered to be less important. So, weekly Full is definitely an overkill; performing Full once every 1-3 months is more than enough.

The backup repository goes to tape from monday to saturday with backup exec 2010 by full backup (no incremental or differential)

Could you elaborate on it? You mean that each day you copy backup files to tape. If so, please be aware that it’s not considered to be a best practice to utilize reversed incremental mode in case copying to tape, and you should forward one, instead. Having such mode guarantees that only small increments will be transferred to tape appliance rather than whole full backup, as in case of reversed incremental method.

Thanks.

[redhorse]

Hello,

That's not possible, but you can either run active full once a month, or switch to forward incremental backup mode and configure your job to create synthetic full with transform once a week.

Thank you!

As mentioned above, with reversed incremental mode the need for performing active full backup isn’t that strong; it’s considered to be less important. So, weekly Full is definitely an overkill; performing Full once every 1-3 months is more than enough.

But I still have at least two full backups at the same time when I run active full once a month or every 2-3 month, is that correct? With Forward incremental I have to run an active full backup every month to be sure that the backup is consistent and I'll get the same Problem?

You mean that each day you copy backup files to tape. If so, please be aware that it’s not considered to be a best practice to utilize reversed incremental mode in case copying to tape, and you should forward one, instead. Having such mode guarantees that only small increments will be transferred to tape appliance rather than whole full backup, as in case of reversed incremental method.

Yes that's right, but we do a full backup on tape every day because of our policy. I don't want to be dependent on more than one tape in case of restore. Perhaps it would be a solution to use reverse incremental with veeam and traditional incremental with backup exec to tape. I would have one full backup on tape every day, on sunday the active full backup and the other days the full reverse incremental file. I just need one tape to restore the state of the last backup, is that right?

[veremin]

But I still have at least two full backups at the same time when I run active full once a month or every 2-3 month, is that correct?

Yep, in both scenarios you would end up having two .vbk files on disk. Active full acts as an independent restore point and it’s not possible to transform previous restore points after active full takes place.

I just need one tape to restore the state of the last backup, is that right?

Assuming that one tape means one .vbk file, then yes, it would be enough.

Thanks.