Forever incremental, only weekly full?

[mikegodwin]

With a forever-incremental job, is there a way to have the the synthetic full be less frequently than once per week? I like the idea of synthetic full backups (much quicker), but it would be nice to have the option to spread them out to increase retention. For example, if I could only run a synthetic full once every 2 weeks, or 1 per month, and so on. Can it be done?

[1-0-1]

Why not just create a duplicate job that does a full backup? I would imagine the processing and disk I/O required to do a synthetic from incremental between longer intervals would take as long as a full backup or come very close to it. This obviously depends on the disk subsystem you are using.

[veremin]

According to the best practice, in case of incremental backup mode it’s recommended indeed to perform synthetic full on weekly and active full on monthly basis.

However, it’s your judgement call whether to follow these guidelines or not.

Another thing that should be kept in mind – the longer backup chain you have till the synthetic full, the longer it will take to complete.

Hope this helps.
Thanks.

[foggy]

For example, if I could only run a synthetic full once every 2 weeks, or 1 per month, and so on. Can it be done?

Mike, actually you cannot perform synthetic full at periods longer than a week, UI does not allow that currently. Probably, some sort of this script modification could allow to enable the synthetic full "manually" once per required period, run the job, and then disable it again.

[veremin]

Furthermore, the GUI also has one restriction, according to which, at least one of the options (synthetic or active full) should be set.

Though, it can be changed by the means of the PowerShell. The following script will disable both of the options:

Code: Select all

Add-PSSnapin VeeamPSSnapin
$JobOptions = Get-Vbrjob -name "Vi-test#31" | Get-VBRJobOptions
$JobOptions.BackupTargetOptions.TransformFullToSyntethic = $False
$JobOptions.BackupStorageOptions.EnableFullBackup = $False
$Job.SetOptions($JobOptions)

So, if your goal is to run synthetic full manually on less frequent basis, the modified variant of the code mentioned by Alexander should be implemented:

Code: Select all

Add-PSSnapin VeeamPSSnapin
$Job = Get-Vbrjob -name "Name of your job"
$OptionsToSet = $Job | Get-VBRJobOptions
$OptionsToSet.BackupTargetOptions.TransformFullToSyntethic = $True
$OptionsToSet.BackupTargetOptions.TransformToSyntethicDays = (Get-Date).DayOfWeek
$Job.SetOptions($OptionsToSet)
Start-VBRJob -Job $Job
$OptionsToSet.BackupTargetOptions.TransformFullToSyntethic = $False
$Job.SetOptions($OptionsToSet)

1. Firstly, it enables synthetic full.
2. After that, it gets actual date and sets it as the day for synthetic full backup.
3. Then it starts the job which according to the previously modified options performs synthetic full backup.
4. When job finishes, synthetic full is disabled again.

This script can be scheduled via Windows Scheduler to run once every two weeks, or once a month. However, for the purpose of backup chain safety, I’d recommend running this script every two weeks, with monthly active full backup option being enabled.

Hope this helps.
Thanks.

[dellock6]

There is also an I/O evaluation to be made on the repository storage. With a two weeks chain, the number of VIB files that need to be added to the synthetic full is double of a single week chain. On large enviroments, this can lead to excessive execution times, even crossing the 23 hours and thus failing the next execution of the job. I think is better for the storage to run more frequent but less stressful synthetic jobs.

Luca.