How does backup copy works?

[JasonPGTF]

I'm rather new in setting up backup copy jobs & having trouble in understanding how it works.

I create a backup copy job on an existing backup jobs.
The details of the current backup jobs as follow - Forward incremental with 14 restore points kept on disk.

I receive a request to have a longer retention of the backups, mainly 1 full backups every week, retain for 3 months.

I create a backup copy job backup job based on the primary backup job. With the following settings.
Restore points to keep 7
Weekly backups - 12

This job interval is 1 day.

I let the job runs for a few days but I did not see any restore points being generated from this backup copy job. Did I do anything wrong?

[foggy]

Hi Jason, seems you're doing everything fine. What do you mean you're not seeing any restore points - hasn't it performed even initial sync (full run)? What do you see in the job session log?

[soncscy]

Hi Jason,

Are you meaning GFS points? Veeam does it a bit uniquely, but it makes sense if you keep in mind the goal is least amount of data over WAN.

Basically, your GFS point (weekly, monthly, etc) is the increment made on that GFS day.

When __that__ point merges with the full backup file, it will create a GFS full backup that reflects the state of the VM on that GFS day.

E.G.,

If you've got a chain like:

Full - Inc - Inc - Inc - Inc - Inc -Inc [Weekly]
------------------------------------^ This is your GFS point

What will happen is that as the chain merges, you will get to a point where the chain is like this:

Full - Inc [Weekly] - Inc - Inc - Inc - Inc - Inc

On the next day, when that Weekly Increment merges, __that__ is when the full backup is made.

This took me a long time to understand, but it made perfect sense once I saw it written out for me by support.