Forward incremental \ tape

[gshaw]

Having read around quite a bit it seems like forward incremental seems a better choice than reverse now (faster, less chance of corruption etc). I'm bearing in mind the need to keep 2-3 full backups on disk for 14-day retention which isn't ideal as I'd prefer to have 30 days but think disk space will become an issue.

So as it stands I'm thinking of...

- run first full on a Friday night
- incrementals run until the next Friday when it does a synthetic full (previous full + increments = new full?)
- keep this going with 14 restore point retention so in theory it should remove older backups somewhere around the end of the 3rd week

The thing I then need to sort out is how this works with tape. I remember a script that backs up the most recent file but that was for reverse incremental, does it work OK with forward incremental as well?

Assuming it does I'd need to meet the following requirements for tape...

- the tape needs to have enough space for a full backup job
- to restore in case of disaster (losing backup server) I'd need to have the full chain of files i.e. the full from the week + all incrementals to get to the point of restore?

Is the logic around forward incremental \ tape just to archive weekly or does it work realistically backing up the daily incrementals as well? Just thinking about how long we'd need to store the tapes before re-using bearing in mind what Veeam requires in terms of the backup chain if I had to restore everything from tape?

[Vitaliy S.]

With forward incremental backup mode you should use this script to backup the latest VBK file: A script for backing up the latest .VBK file

- to restore in case of disaster (losing backup server) I'd need to have the full chain of files i.e. the full from the week + all incrementals to get to the point of restore?

Yes, that's correct. Forward incremental backup mode requires the entire backup chain to be presented if you want to restore to the latest VM state.

Is the logic around forward incremental \ tape just to archive weekly or does it work realistically backing up the daily incrementals as well? Just thinking about how long we'd need to store the tapes before re-using bearing in mind what Veeam requires in terms of the backup chain if I had to restore everything from tape?

The main idea behind this mode is to allow you to offload a daily VIB (changes only) file to tape/offsite without touching the main VBK file, which would be the case with reversed incremental mode.

[davegold]

It seems to me that if you want to back up just the full backup and you are using reverse incremental, it would be best to query via powershell to confirm that the job isn't running before starting the backup.