Feature Enhancement Request – Granular Scheduling and Management for Full, Incremental, Application & Tape Backups

[LoveU3000]

Feature Request 1 – Independent Full & Incremental Scheduling and Retention

Current Behavior:
Full and Incremental backups within the same backup job are managed primarily through the overall job configuration. Administrators do not have sufficient ability to define completely independent schedules and retention policies for Full and Incremental backup operations.

Expected Behavior:
Allow administrators to configure Full and Incremental backups independently within the same job, including:
Separate schedule/start time
Separate backup days
Separate retention
Separate backup window
Independent enable/disable control
Example:
Incremental: Monday–Friday, 8:00 PM, 30-day retention
Full: Saturday, 11:00 PM, 12-week retention

Use Case:
An organization wants daily Incremental backups but a Full backup only once per week, with different retention requirements.

Business Impact:
Provides better control over storage consumption, backup windows, production workload, and retention requirements without creating multiple jobs.

Feature Request 2 – Application (DB) Backup to Tape

Current Behavior:
Application/plugin-based backups do not provide the same flexibility for duplication/copy to tape as supported disk-based backup workflows.

Expected Behavior:
Allow an application/plugin backup stored on disk to be selected as the source for a tape backup/copy job.
Example:
Application Backup → Disk Repository → Tape
The tape copy should have its own schedule and retention configuration.

Use Case:
Customers using application-aware/plugin backups require a secondary offline/air-gapped copy on tape for disaster recovery and long-term retention.

Business Impact:
Improves ransomware protection, air-gapped backup capability, disaster recovery, compliance, and long-term retention.

Feature Request 3 – Independent Start/Stop Control for Full & Incremental

Current Behavior:
Operational control is primarily available at the overall backup-job level. Administrators cannot independently start, stop, enable, or disable only Full or only Incremental processing without affecting the complete job.

Expected Behavior:
Provide independent controls for Full and Incremental disk and tape backups:
Start/Stop
Enable/Disable
Run Now
Schedule On/Off

Example:
Full Backup: Disabled
Incremental Backup: Enabled
The Incremental schedule should continue without interruption.

Use Case:
An administrator needs to temporarily stop Full backups due to storage maintenance or limited resources while continuing daily Incremental backups.

Business Impact:
Reduces operational risk and provides greater flexibility during maintenance, storage constraints, and infrastructure changes.

Feature Request 4 – Independent Tape Scheduling and Control

Current Behavior:
Tape backup scheduling and execution is limiting granular control over Full and Incremental tape operations.

Expected Behavior:
Allow Full and Incremental tape backups to have independent control:
Start full individually
Start incremental individually
Enable/Disable individual jobs
Run Now controls

[Mildur]

Hi Amit,

Welcome to the forum. I like the Marvel reference in your username.

Regarding your requests, please do not mix different workloads/features into a single topic. We have dedicated subforums for general requests, hypervisor-specific backups, application backups, and tape-related questions.

Request 1 "Independent Full & Incremental Scheduling and Retention"
Request 3 "Independent Start/Stop Control for Full & Incremental"
Request 4 "Independent Tape Scheduling and Control for Full and Incremental Backups"

I agree that having more control would be nice, but I am also concerned that too many granular options and combinations could lead to micromanagement of backups. Would you want to see the different options object level (VM) or on job level?

I have one question: When using synthetic full backups and a Fast Clone-supported backup target, backup session duration and storage usage should not differ much between full and incremental backups. Are you using backup targets without Fast Clone support? Then having full backups enabled should not be a problem. Also, changed block tracking helps reduce the load on the production hypervisor.

Request 2 "Application (DB) Backup to Tape":
This feature was released with v13.1

Best,
Fabian