Incremental with synthetic full every 14th day in V8?

[Jois]

Is it possible to choose do the synthetic full from for example every 14 day in version 8? In v7 you only can choose to do it every 7 day.
I want to keep my backups on disk for 14 days and then I must have space for 3 fullbackups. If I could run the synthetic full every 14 day I only need to have 2 fullbackups on disk. That would save me a lot of space.
I earlier used reversed incremental but that tented to take much more time.

[Shestakov]

Hello Jois,
In VBRv8 you can choose a day to run Synthetic Full just like in v7.
In your case you can use forward incrementals and make active full backups once in 2 weeks.
Thanks.

[foggy]

Haven't you considered the new forward incremental-forever backup mode, introduced in v8? It requires space for a single full only (similarly to reversed incremental), however puts less stress on the underlying storage.

[Jois]

The thing is that we also take incremental tape backups of the veeam backup disks. We do this daytime when no veeam backups are running.
When I use standard forward incr backups with synthetic full I only have to backup one incremental veeam backup to tape every day (and one syn.full every week). This because I don't change the veeam fullbackup file. With reversed incremental and forward incremental-forever I touch the veeam fullbackup file every night and then have to transfer the fullbackup file to tape every day.
So that's why I can't find any better method than to run veeam incr backups and have synthetic fulls every 14 day. Why is this option not in veeam? Is it because it might increase time building the syn.full?

[veremin]

In fact, version 8 tape implementation brings support to both backup copy and backup jobs that use forward incremental forever backup mode. In other words, the .vbk file that is being transformed regularly once retention is reached will not be copied to tape on daily basis, instead you now have an option called synthesized full backup. This functionality creates a synthesized full backup directly on tapes, using restore points present on disks.

So, new backup mode might be your way to go, indeed.

Thanks.

[foggy]

Why is this option not in veeam? Is it because it might increase time building the syn.full?

Correct. However you still have the option of doing less frequent synthetic fulls with the help of scripting. This is not recommended though, which is exactly why we are preventing such configurations in UI.

[Jois]

OK. Thanks. I am not very good att PS scripting. When I run the the first prepare script I get an error at line 5.

Code: Select all

Line 5 is $Job.SetOptions($JobOptions)

The error is:
You cannot call a method on a null-valued expression.
At line:5 char:1
+ $Job.SetOptions($JobOptions)
+ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    + CategoryInfo          : InvalidOperation: (:) [], RuntimeException
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : InvokeMethodOnNull

What can be wrong?

[Gostev]

Hi, for help with PowerShell scripting please post a query in the PowerShell subforum (but please search that forum for cmdlet in question first, as there are hundreds of existing scripts posted which do largely the same things). Thanks!

[Jois]

Hi again. I now have tried 'Incremental with synthetic full every 14th day' for about half a year. I have done it by schedule the PS-job in this thread. This really gives me benefits of saving diskspace. I now only need to have 2 syn fulls on disk to be able to restore 14 days back. So now I save 1/3 of disk space both on disk but also later on tape.
With the schedule options in the GUI today I must do one syn fyll every week and then gets 3 fullbackups on disk to be able to restore 14 days back.
How do I request this to be included in the GUI in the future? That is to be able to do a syn full every 14 day.
It is not a very nice solution to have to schedule the jobs outside Veeam.

[foggy]

How do I request this to be included in the GUI in the future? That is to be able to do a syn full every 14 day.

You've just made a request, by posting your feedback here on forums.

[Jois]

OK. I really hope this function will make into the GUI. We need every possibility to save backup space. And I soon find it hard to motivate Veeam compared to IBM Tivoli Storage Manager for Virtual Environments. I really like Veeam and would like to stay with it as long as possible.
BR Jois