Confusion over backup copies

[rlawsha]

I must admit, even after reading the documentation on backup copies I am still confused. Synthetic copies, reverse incremental, replication, it is a chore to figure out the right thing to do. Here is my scenario:

During the night I have jobs that copy VMWare VM's from our EMC SAN to the internal drives of our VEEAM server. That works fine. During the day I want to copy those backups (now stored on our VEEAM server) to a different SAN. The goal is to have the backups in two separate physical locations.

The VEEAM server is connected to a pair of Cisco N5K's via dual 10gb FCoE adapters. The EMC SAN connects to the N5K's the same way. So the backups at night are fast enough. During the day I want to copy to a NetApp SAN but it is only connected via a 1GB iSCSCI link. I do not want to be using both SAN's at the same time so during the night I will copy from the EMC SAN and during the day I will write to the NetApp SAN.

So I created BACKUP COPY jobs (one for each regular job). The backup jobs run at night and the backup copy jobs run during the day. When I create the backup jobs I have a choice of source (infrastructure, backups or jobs). I assume JOBS is what I want? I don't know. VEEAM support says "copy jobs" copy data not files, huh?

Would appreciate any suggestions.

[foggy]

When I create the backup jobs I have a choice of source (infrastructure, backups or jobs). I assume JOBS is what I want? I don't know. VEEAM support says "copy jobs" copy data not files, huh?

If you want to have a separate backup copy job for each regular backup job, it is ok to select the backup job as a source. Backup copy will copy data for all the VMs backed up by the corresponding backup job. Support engineer is correct, backup copy job does not simply copy backup files created by the corresponding backup job, but rather synthetically creates restore points on target repository using data available in the source repository, copying the latest VM state during each synchronization interval.

[rlawsha]

That sounds fine. My next question is, assume the primary backup location goes bad for some reason. Is the data in the backup copy 'restorable' just the same as the data in the main job? I am doing some disaster planning here.

[veremin]

That sounds fine. My next question is, assume the primary backup location goes bad for some reason. Is the data in the backup copy 'restorable' just the same as the data in the main job?

Not sure whether I follow. You mean if for some reason a source backup job gets corrupted, whether a backup copy job that uses it as a source will be corrupted as well? Thanks.

[rlawsha]

No not corrupted - down. Primary storage is in one site - backup copy data is in another physical site. If the primary storage went down I would like to be able to restore VM's from the offsite disks. The offsite disks contain the backup copy stuff. Let's say someone came in and stole my VEEAM server (unlikely but bear with me). The VEEAM server has not only VEEAM on it but also the backups. If I put in a new VEEAM server I want to know if I can restore data from the offsite SAN. The data on the offsite SAN is the copy jobs stuff.

[foggy]

Backups created by the backup copy job are just ordinary Veeam B&R backup files and can be used for recovery at any time (either from the original Veeam B&R console or after being imported into the freshly installed one). They are not dependant on the corresponding regular backup job that serves as a source for them.