pull a backupup from an incremental chain

[leeg123]

We had an issue that we needed to restore data from an older backup set. We use the backup copy jobs and set for one full backups with 60 days incremental. We just didn't have the room on the destination to set for multiple fulls. This is getting resolved asap. However is there any way we can create a full backup vbk from and earlier restore point, w/o having to first restore the entire set of vms and then backup again? We know we can copy the full vbk from this backup set, but that file is a little to old, we want to keep one that is several weeks after (incremental)

Any advise surely welcomed

thanks

lee

[veremin]

Copy existing chain, create additional backup job/backup copy job, map to the copied chain, set job retention, so that, the required increment would be the oldest point (say, required increment is 30 day old, then, retention should be set to 31). After that, let job perform one cycle. As the result, you would have required point stored as .vbk. Thanks.

[leeg123]

That sounds like it should work out well.
Could be a possible "feature request" to make all of that one button click. I guess this situation doesn't come up to frequently.

thanks for that help. Ill do that for now.


lee.

[veremin]

Yep, it could be considered as feature request.

You're right that it's not the most demanded functionality, though.

Kindly, let us know how the proposed approach works for you.

Thanks.

[foggy]

Lee, could you please elaborate on what is the purpose of pulling the data from an incremental chain into a separate full backup (since you can restore from this restore point without doing that)? Do you need to save it for archival purposes?

[leeg123]

Absolutely

Due to disk space limitations, we simply had a backup job with a 60 day retention. We weren’t doing gfs rotations.
One morning we cleaned out some older active directory users , deleting users that seemed inactive for several months. A few days later a user noticed that some of the data in one of the exchange public folders was missing. After the panic settled, we located the cause (a deleted user was linked to the public folder) and corrected the issue, then restored the data. Several days later we had a similar request, with a different folder.
We know the date that these public folders were on last, which is why we needed to preserve that particular backup set, before it became overwritten. This client has hundreds, if not thousands of public folders, so it is likely that we will need to restore more data in the future.

We have since ordered more storage for this client to begin a GFS rotation, but I still think it may be a good idea to offer a way to export a backup file based on a specified date as a full (synthetic) backup. Probably a feature no one else has and good also be useful for marketing.

Just a thought

thanks

lee

[foggy]

Thanks for clarifying the use case, makes sense.

[crichardson]

I've searched and can't find an answer to a simple question. Is is possible to generate a full backup file (vbk) from a specific point in time of a backup chain?

In January we missed a full backup for month end. I have a reverse incremental backup chain which includes VIBs from late January. What I'd like to do is generate a full backup (synthetic full?) from Jan 31 which is a VRB file. Is this possible?

[foggy]

Please see above for the possible solution. Otherwise, you can restore VMs from that restore point and back them up into a separate full.