New to Veeam, Choosing my backup strategy

[ChrisJ83]

Hi all

I was hoping for some advice as I am new to Veeam after mainly using Symantec Backup Exec previously.

Infrastructure wise I have a backup server that will run Veeam and backup to local disks, from there I was going to do a backup copy job to a Synology SAN and then in time replicate this SAN to another SAN at a remote office. I am backing up VM's on a Hyper-V host.

I was going to go with Reversed incremental for the backup mode to save on storage space is this recommended? Can I still do granular restores from x amount of days ago using this option depending on retention policy?

If I went with RI would I be able to do a weekly/monthly copy/archive to a USB disk from either the backup server or SAN? Or would I need to create an additional job using Incremental settings?

Any help/advice appreciated.

Cheers
Chris

[Shestakov]

Hello Chris,

First of all welcome to Veeam Community Forums!

I was going to go with Reversed incremental for the backup mode to save on storage space is this recommended?

Correct. Reversed incremental backups are more efficient for disk-based backups.

Can I still do granular restores from x amount of days ago using this option depending on retention policy?

Absolutely. We also have a number of handy recovery features.

If I went with RI would I be able to do a weekly/monthly copy/archive to a USB disk from either the backup server or SAN? Or would I need to create an additional job using Incremental settings?

Yes, please consider using Backup Copy Jobs and GFS retention policy (stands for Grandfather-Father-Son). USB hard drives are supported by Veeam B&R as backup repositories.
By the way, FAQ is also can be helpful in a case of concerns.

Thank you.

[ChrisJ83]

Hi nshestakov

Thanks for taking the time to reply.

Can you confirm if I am correct following on from your comments?

To apply a GFS retention policy I would need to setup 3 separate backup jobs

1st backing up daily
2nd backing up weekly
3rd backing up monthly

In this scenario would all 3 be using RI?

I could then have a daily, weekly, monthly and yearly backup copy job which copied the respective backup to a SAN/USB disk?

Or would I need 4 and add a yearly to the above? Or am I completely off on the wrong tangent?

The Veeam repository will be stored on a Server 2012 R2 volume which will have deduplication enabled so I don't see their being a space issue keeping so many full backups.

Again thanks for taking the time to respond.

Cheers
Chris

[umenz]

Hi Chris,

this is a good solution for small Data.

is this case:

1st backing up daily
2nd backing up weekly
3rd backing up monthly

The advantage is: if the fullbackup File get corrupt, you lost only the Daily or monthly or weekly sets.
But a big disadvantages is:
You need the space for 3 full Backups + a lot of incrementals.
If you have a small environment with 1 TB , you need up to 8 TB Backup repository space to support 1 Year.
My opinion is to add a Quarter or Year Job and you need 10 TB. This is a good base.

I am interesting too if anyone have a better solution for my 50TB customer.

regards
Ulrich

[Shestakov]

Chris,

In this scenario would all 3 be using RI?

You can either set up several regular backup jobs (one per each retention period) or set up a single backup copy job and specify GFS settings appropriately. Here on the forum was a number of related topics about GFS.

The Veeam repository will be stored on a Server 2012 R2 volume which will have deduplication enabled so I don't see their being a space issue keeping so many full backups.

There is an interesting topic on recommended full backup frequency.
Thank you.

[ChrisJ83]

Ok from reading the links I hope I have a better understanding of it.

Because I wan't to backup to local disk then copy data to tape and a SAN daily, weekly and monthly am I best doing the following

Forward Incremental backup with a retention policy of 31 with Enable Synthetic fulls on a Saturday (Do I need to enable transform previous full backup chains into Rollbacks? Assuming not as I have deduplication enabled volume or would you go with this due to backing up to tape and SAN?)

I would then create a backup copy job onto SAN with restore points to keep 5 to satisfy my daily backups and then keep the following restore point for archival purposes. Weekly backup = 4, Monthly = 1, Yearly = 1.

This would again if I understand correctly mean I have 5 incremental dailys, 4 full weeklys, 1 full monthly and 1 full yearly on the SAN.

*I haven't actually installed the tape drive yet so I assume I can't see a file to tape option yet*

I would then create a file to tape based on the above backup copy to backup, I will try to go into more detail about this if my above thinking is correct as to not over complicate things.

We currently use a GFS policy with Symantec and I have two jobs running for the file server each night Mon, Tue, wed and Thur one job backups up incremental to SAN the other incremental to tape. Friday a full backup to SAN and another full to tape, first Friday of every month full to a SAN and another full to tape.

Again thanks for taking the time out to help me understand.

[Shestakov]

Hi Chris,

Forward Incremental backup with a retention policy of 31 with Enable Synthetic fulls on a Saturday

Do you want to keep backup files of every day of a month? If yes, then you're good to go.

Do I need to enable transform previous full backup chains into Rollbacks?

The transformation helps to save some space in a disk since it keeps only one .vbk on a disk; Given your planned setup and configuration, I don`t think there is a need in doing it.

Assuming not as I have deduplication enabled volume or would you go with this due to backing up to tape and SAN?

For tape repository it`s better to avoid using reversed incremental backups if you daily copy increments to the tape, so, again, there is no need to make a transformation into rollbacks.

[veremin]

This would again if I understand correctly mean I have 5 incremental dailys, 4 full weeklys, 1 full monthly and 1 full yearly on the SAN.

Correct, GFS restore points are stored as full backups.

I haven't actually installed the tape drive yet so I assume I can't see a file to tape option yet.

Correct. Make sure that a tape drive is shown in Windows Device Manager properly. Once tape device is reflected there, it will be automatically detected by a backup server and you will be able to utilize backup jobs.

Thanks.