Best way to update off-site backup with new VM?

[mikegodwin]

I have around 20 VMs successfully backing up off-site over VPN each night. The bandwidth won't allow to run a full backup over the VPN, it must be seeded. What's the best way to add new VMs to the off-site backup? Is there a way to run a backup of the new VM, ship that off-site and somehow seed or merge it into the existing off-site backup? Or do I have to either re-run an entire full backup and ship that off-site, or add a new job each time we add a new VM?

We are starting a number of projects where new servers will be added regularly for some time, and if we have to run a full backup and ship it each time, that's going to cause some delays in our project since we can't run a full backup except on the weekends, and even then we have to time it correctly to avoid taking servers offline during business hours when the snapshots commit after the VMs get backed up.

[Vitaliy S.]

Hi Mike,

I don't believe there is a way to merge existing backup file with a new, seeded one, so you will need to ship full VBK file every time. Alternatively, you could use backup copy jobs with the trick below:

1. Create local backup of the required VM
2. Create a temp repository on the remote site
3. Copy the newly created VBK and VBM files to the temp repository on the remote site
4. Run a rescan option to populate this repository with backup files
5. Create a fake backup job on the main site and map it to the imported backup files on the remote site
6. Once you do this, go to the backup copy job settings and specify this temp repository as a source for your backup copy job (Virtual Machines -> Source...)
7. Then click "Sync Now" on the backup copy job to start injecting new VM backup to existing backup chain
8. After initial sync, change your backup copy job to use repositories on the main site and uncheck the temp repository you've created before (step 2)

P.S. please note that if you decide to use backup copy jobs and would like to use backup mapping feature, please follow the procedure described in this topic to do it properly.

Should work!

[Vitaliy S.]

...and of course the easiest and really efficient way to send your backup files offsite is to use backup copy jobs with WAN acceleration. In this case there is almost none configuration required and everything is automated! The amount of data sent will be much lower compared to transferring full VM backups.