Estimated Required Space Report?

[RaymondOverman]

I've just gotten started with Veeam B&R so I'm monitoring the space it's using closely as I go through the first cycle of backups. I have a few questions.

1) Is there a way to generate a report that gives you the information found in the "Destination Storage" window that pops up when you click the Check Space button on a job? Specifically, I'd like to see a list of jobs with the Estimated Required Space numbers without having to go into each job individually and build a spreadsheet. This would help a lot in determining if I need to change the number of restore points or add more online disk space to my backup storage. Trying to anticipate the problems before they occur.

2) Does the check space button take into account the other jobs associated with the same backup storage media or is the calculation independent of the other jobs and expecting to be able to use the entire remaining space for that job?

3) In a scenario of using online storage for daily incremental / bi-weekly synthetic fulls / copying fulls to removable storage for offsite, do you copy just the VBK (where are exclusions in Veeam file copy) or do you use a file copy job and copy the whole folder? Do your really need the individual restore points offsite or just the point in time latest for disaster recovery purposes since you have the restore points locally? This is a request for opinions and I'd like to hear some different ideas on how you justify the time and disk space it takes to copy incremental restores when generally the offsite backups are just insurance.

Thanks

[Vitaliy S.]

Hello Raymond,

1. There is no such report, as disk space requirements are pretty hard to estimate due to many variables involved into calculations. You can use this formula to get a ballpark number of free disk space requirements, but this is not scientific.

2. No, "Check Space" button is not aware about other jobs targeted to the same destination storage.

3. Basically, if there is any chance of losing primary site completely, I would recommend keeping the entire backup chain. Please look through some offsite backup strategies used by our existing customers, should help.

Thank you.

[RaymondOverman]

I should have been a little clearer. If I'm doing incrementals with weekly synthetic fulls and transforming the backup chain into rollbacks is the data in the .vbk file created at the end of the week not enough to recover to the last known good backup? Effectively ignoring previous restore points and restoring the server from the last rolled up synthetic full backup?

If the data center is wiped off the face of the Earth at that point, wouldn't I still be able to recover using just that .vbk file (and newly built ESXi servers)?

I'm not necessarily planning to do it this way. At this point I'm taking the .vrb files with me too. Just trying to make sure I understand how it's working and what is actually required for DR.

[Gostev]

Hi Raymond - yes, the VBK file created by transform process at the end of the week is enough to recover the latest VM state. You can even extract that VBK without Veeam server present. We ship a tiny extract.exe tool (look for it in the product installation folder). No matter which media you use to backup your VBK files, just remember to put this tool there as well, and you will be able to restore data from the backup file even in 10 years from now - provided that media is still functional

[RaymondOverman]

Thanks Gostev.

[ctchang]

Hi Raymond - yes, the VBK file created by transform process at the end of the week is enough to recover the latest VM state. You can even extract that VBK without Veeam server present. We ship a tiny extract.exe tool (look for it in the product installation folder). No matter which media you use to backup your VBK files, just remember to put this tool there as well, and you will be able to restore data from the backup file even in 10 years from now - provided that media is still functional

Can you tell us more about this extract.exe? What if I only have is this big VBK file with NO vCenter or MSSQL database presented anymore.

Do you mean by using extract.exe and this single VBK, I am able to restore only one backup copy (the latest one as it's the final product of transormation if using synnetic full backup)

[Sethbartlett]

You can restore whatever restore point in time the VBK was with the extract.exe tool. There should be some more information, such as syntax, if you do a find for "extract" in our B&R Users Guide.

[ctchang]

You can restore whatever restore point in time the VBK was with the extract.exe tool. There should be some more information, such as syntax, if you do a find for "extract" in our B&R Users Guide.

It's great to know such ultility exist.

So in other words, we really don't need to backup MSSQL of the production B&R as you said extract.exe will be enough even we lose the whole production site right? As long as we have this latest VBK file, then we are fine, pls confirm.

[Sethbartlett]

Correct. Even if you lost the SQL backup, you could fire a new Veeam installation up(which takes less than 5 minutes) and do "Import Backup" and import your vbk/vrb/vib files and restore from those if you need other restore points. The DB information is more about holding your job information and making sure your jobs run, you can import the data needed for restores from the files themselves