Daily backups - Incremental with synthetic fulls

[itdirector]

We are currently running VBR 7.x in 6 of our offices (all standalone installs). In our main office, the backup jobs are large ( 2 backup jobs at 2.5TB each).
For the main office our daily backups are currently setup like this:
- 30 Restore points
- Monday through Saturday Incremental
- Synthetic fulls Monday through Saturday.
- Transform previous full backups chains into fulls enabled.
- Active fulls once a month

The above backup jobs are taking too long (between 5 to 7 hours). The incremental backup itself is fast and only takes about 1.5 hours. The Synthetic fulls & Transform are what take the longest amount of time.

We were thinking about switching to only Incremental , with no synthetic fulls & no transform, with one full backup per month. We would end up with 30+ .vib backups & one full .vbk backup for each job after a month.
Is that advisable? We don't have enough backup space to run full backups once a week to cut down on the long chain on .vib backups & there is no option to run a full backup twice a month.
2nd copy is not an issue since we replicate to our disaster recovery site at night. I just want to know if anyone else is running long incremental chains (30+ restore points) with only one full backup per month?

Thx.

[opg70]

From my understanding, please be aware that until all the backups in the chain expire they will not be deleted from disk. So ultimately you might end up with 2 full backups and 60 incrementals taking up space on the repository, before the previous month gets deleted.

[Shestakov]

Hello,

The above backup jobs are taking too long (between 5 to 7 hours). The incremental backup itself is fast and only takes about 1.5 hours. The Synthetic fulls & Transform are what take the longest amount of time.

Do you have any specific reason to make synthetic fulls daily?
In a sake of time economy makes more sense to do daily incremental backups + Synthetic Full on Saturday. It will take same space; but, save a lot of time.

Also I would suggest you to consider Reversed Incremental backup method, it does same as Forward incremental+Synthetic Full+Transform into rollbacks, but faster.

We were thinking about switching to only Incremental , with no synthetic fulls & no transform, with one full backup per month. We would end up with 30+ .vib backups & one full .vbk backup for each job after a month.
Is that advisable?

Here is a great topic with recommendations how often you need a full backup. Please review.

Thank you.

[Shestakov]

opg70,

until all the backups in the chain expire they will not be deleted from disk. So ultimately you might end up with 2 full backups and 60 incrementals taking up space on the repository, before the previous month gets deleted.

It`s correct for Forward Incremental backup method. For having only one Full backup there is an option "Transform previous full backup chains into rollback".
Thank you.

[opg70]

Agreed - but I was replying to the OP's plan to do incrementals with no transforms.

[itdirector]

Thx Nshestakov, but synthetic fulls on Saturday has the same effect as running full backups every Saturday. We will end up with 5 to 6 full backups per month, which we don't have room for (2.5TB x 2 jobs = 5TB each x 6 = 30TB); & transform on Saturday doesn't work either because as I stated, each transform is taking 3+ hours daily (so 3 hours x 5 incremental backups = 15+ hours on Saturdays). Unless you are telling me that running Synthetic full & Transform once on Saturdays is much faster than running Synthetic full & transform everyday? I figured it would take the same amount of time.

Also, reverse incremental is the same speed as Incremental + Synthetic full + Transform, with the issue of our Exchange Server snapshots getting large while reverse incremental is running.


how often you need a full backup. Please review.
This doesn't really answer my question. Running 30 restore points on daily incremental backups (Monday through Saturday), with full backups once a month. Is this Ok in Veeam's view & would you recommend this to your clients?

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.[/quote]

[Shestakov]

synthetic fulls on Saturday has the same effect as running full backups every Saturday

Not really. Synthetic Full Backup is made of previous .vbk and .vib files, while Active Full Backup is made from the scratch.
Running Synthetic Full(unlike Active Full), you can transform previous full backup chains into rollback.

My point was that you don`t need to do it every day, since it`s resource- and time-consuming.

We will end up with 5 to 6 full backups per month ...
... Unless you are telling me that running Synthetic full & Transform once on Saturdays is much faster than running Synthetic full & transform everyday? I figured it would take the same amount of time.

You will end up with 1 full backup, just like now.
A single run will take same amount of time; but, you will do Synthetic full not every day, just once a week on the weekend.

Running 30 restore points on daily incremental backups (Monday through Saturday), with full backups once a month. Is this Ok in Veeam's view & would you recommend this to your clients?

Yes, that is fine. But keep in mind it will take more time to restore backup from the end of the long chain.

Thank you.