Bet way to set up our monthly backup

[matt.allford]

Hey all,

We have Veeam B&R 6.5 in and working well. We currently have 3 jobs that run every week night that are incremental with synthetic fulls and are transforming previous fulls into rollbacks.

We have the retention policy set to 20 restore points, which will give us one month of nightly backups.

We need to set up a job that keeps monthly backups as well. I set up a job to run on the last Saturday of each month with the same incremental settings as above, and to keep 12 restore points. But it runs the synthetic fulls every week on the Saturday, so even though it's only been running for 2 months, there are 8 restore points to choose from.

What is the best way to perform the monthly backups? We probably don't have room to do a full backup at the end of every month as it would be 3.5TB every month, meaning we need 40TB+ to keep just the monthly backups for a year.

I'm interested in how others set this routine up and any suggestions you might have.

Cheers!

[Vitaliy S.]

Hi Matt,

What should be the retention policy for the monthly backup job? Have you considered switching to reversed incremental backup mode, as you do not have enough free space on the target storage to save another full backup?

Thanks!

[matt.allford]

Hey,

Cheers for the reply. At this stage the retention policy would be to keep 12 copies (1 a month for 12 months), but there is a chance that might get blown right out to needing to keep 1 backup per month for the last 7 years (this is the current backup strategy with the tape solution).

What would be the downsides of reversed incremental and what would that look like in raw format on the backup disk?

Cheers.

[Vitaliy S.]

The only downside I can imagine of is that if you need to offload your monthly backups elsewhere, you will have to copy the entire VBK file (full backup) every time, as with reversed incremental mode the VBK file will always contain the most recent VM data. Apart from that, I do not see any issues with this approach.

and what would that look like in raw format on the backup disk?

Can you please clarify your question, as I'm not sure I understand what you mean.

[matt.allford]

Can you please clarify your question, as I'm not sure I understand what you mean.

Sorry. All I meant was what file types can we expect to see in the backup destination using the reversed incremental method?

Our plan would be to run the backup on the last day of every month. We would like to keep the most recent 12 months of data in the live backup storage area and, if possible, move monthly backups older than 12 months to other storage (a NAS, for example, that we can take offsite, but bring back into the environment and load the backups from.

For example, 4 years down the track, it would be nice to have:

• The last 12 monthly backups accessible on the live backup repository that Veeam is using
  Monthly backups from years 1-3 off site stored on a NAS (that we copied the monthly backups onto), but the ability to restore from these backups using Veeam if required

[Vitaliy S.]

All I meant was what file types can we expect to see in the backup destination using the reversed incremental method?

At your target repository you will have a set of VBK and VRB files (increments).

if possible, move monthly backups older than 12 months to other storage (a NAS, for example, that we can take offsite, but bring back into the environment and load the backups from.

To offload monthly backup files to another storage, you will need to copy the entire VBK file, and I guess the time needed to offload the entire VBK shouldn't be an issue since there is no backup window for this operation, right?

[matt.allford]

To offload monthly backup files to another storage, you will need to copy the entire VBK file, and I guess the time needed to offload the entire VBK shouldn't be an issue since there is no backup window for this operation, right?

Yep, that's correct. There will be no backup window for this operation so that will be fine.

Thanks very much for your help. I will adjust our monthly backup routines and work on the basis of reversed incrementals.

Cheers!

[dellock6]

Uhm, to be honest, if you are using reverse incremental there is a backup window indeed. The VBK file is going to be modified at the next job execution, so you need to complete the vbk copy before then next job run starts.
In some designs, we created first a second local copy of the vbk file before shipping it via wan, so if the remote copy takes more than 24 hrs, the secondary vbk file is not touched by the daily backup job.

Luca.

[Vitaliy S.]

Since we were talking about backup job that runs only on a monthly schedule, then the 30 days backup window should be more than enough to offload backup files to tape, NAS etc.

[Karatekav]

We need to set up a job that keeps monthly backups as well. I set up a job to run on the last Saturday of each month with the same incremental settings as above, and to keep 12 restore points. But it runs the synthetic fulls every week on the Saturday, so even though it's only been running for 2 months, there are 8 restore points to choose from.
!

Hi, Just curious why have you set this to run synthetics every week if it is only a monthly backup and so should have only had 2 restore points for the first 2 months?

2) Also have you now got the desired results with reverse incremental?

3) do you need to set up a separate active monthly full backup when you do set up a reverse incremental?

4) would it not be better to have just synthetic fulls enabled with the option for transforming previous backup chains into roll backs?

i ask these questions becuase I am setting up a job like your own and have similar questions as the ones you had.
thanks

[foggy]

Dexter, now, if you need monthly backups aside from the regular ones, you can utilize the backup copy jobs to avoid unnecessary touch of production VMs.

[Karatekav]

Thanks for your input. I take it this is a feature of version 7.0 + correct? we currently use 6.5 but do plan to upgrade soon

[veremin]

I take it this is a feature of version 7.0 + correct?

Correct.

[foggy]

Yes, and it is actually good time to upgrade, since we will stop supporting version 6.5 along with our next v8 release (which is planned for early Q4).

[Karatekav]

thanks

Yes, and it is actually good time to upgrade, since we will stop supporting version 6.5 along with our next v8 release (which is planned for early Q4).

Thanks guys but until we do upgrade, I need to set up monthly and annual backups for a VM with average 1.1 TB in data size. (12 restore points and a separate job for the monthly) I want to avoid provisioning 15TB+ just for the monthly job. would synthetic fulls enabled with the option for transforming previous backup chains into roll backs not help reduce the storage consumption better than reverse incrementals?

[foggy]

In terms of storage consumption both methods are absolutely equal. Both maintain a single full backup file (except the days synthetic full is scheduled to be performed on).

[Shestakov]

Dexter, one more tip.

2) Also have you now got the desired results with reverse incremental?
3) do you need to set up a separate active monthly full backup when you do set up a reverse incremental?

When you update to VBR v7 and choose to make reversed incrementals + backup copy jobs, don`t forget to do Full backups once in ~2 months in sake of the backup integrity.
Thank you.

[Karatekav]

Dexter, one more tip.

But my confusion is, What amount of restore points are we assuming here? I have created a separate job to run once a month as a synthetic full with the option to transform previous full backup chains into roll backs so that only 1 VBK exists. I set 12 restore points (one for each month). If I am donig active Full backups every 2 months then would that not defeat the purpose of running the synthetic full with roll backs every month? I am trying to save disk space here...

[foggy]

The referred recommendations are for the daily backups, so you can schedule active full once a year for this job (as this is the less frequent option available).

[Karatekav]

Ok sorry but I am confused now. I have set up a separate monthly job for a VM to run only on the 4th sunday of every month, I want it to run whilst transofrming Full backup chains into roll backs (and ticked sunday as the day to run it) But it seems to be running the backup weekly not once a month as I asked it too! am I missing soething here? I have 12 restore points to account for the number of months in the year. If its going to run every week then what is the point of my asking it to run once a month?

[foggy]

Sorry for not mentioning this earlier, but synthetic fulls cannot be scheduled less often than once a week (you have to select at least one week day for the synthetic full to be created at, and synthetic full is triggered on that day regardless of the job main schedule). I think you'd better go with reverse incremental mode in this case, it also will maintain a single full backup file in the repository.