Full backup poll

[caustic386]

How often is everyone running full backups via WAN? In our environment, this takes 10 days due to 10Mb uplink. It's better to run a local backup (7 hours) and drive it over, but, how often should this be done?

Has anyone gone extended periods of time (3 months+) with only incremental (reverse or regular)? What was the longest period of time, and were your restores OK?

I'm used to doing nightly fulls via BackupExec, but that program is a bear and Veeam is much better. I just can't put myself at ease, yet, about not having full backups on a regular basis. Unfortunately, this is mostly due to the unreliable nature of tape - but, old habits die hard!

[Cokovic]

Running reversed incrementals for over a year now and works like a charm. Never had any problems with restores.

[dellock6]

With reverse incremental you have full backups at the end in the latest retention point, so there is no worry about long chains that can break at some points.

[caustic386]

Thanks for the feedback! I suppose that, with LAN replicas, everything should be fine. It's certainly an adjustment!

[jwaynejones]

I have several reverse incremental jobs that will be two years old on June 22nd, and I can do FLR or whole VM recovery from them without issue. Other than the initial full backup, they have never taken a full backup since they were created (unless it was required by one of the upgrades, but I don't remember that hapening), and that includes backing up the Veeam database, upgrading the server to Windows 2008 R2, and re-importing the DB.

[caustic386]

2 years - impressive! That's what I was hoping to hear!