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jadonr
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Questions regarding Backup Policies and Maintenance

Post by jadonr »

I have reviewed the documentation but am still a bit unclear on a few things. From what I understand, VBR doesn't actually offer file versioning, but can someone further explain how restore points work? If I have a policy defined with 7 restore points and I have a document that changes 7 times over the course of a year, I will only have restore point from the last 7 times the backup ran, correct? If I have the policy defined instead to use 7 days, and I have a document that is modified 8 days ago and then again 2 days ago, I presume only the second restore point will be available.

Also, what is the benefit of configuring a Synthetic or Active full backup after the initial full backup has taken place? Wouldn't the incremental backup's take less space and provide the same data to recover? Or is this simply for added security in the event that the initial full backup was to become corrupt/lost? Assuming this is true, is that not what the "storage level corruption guard" is supposed to handle?

Is it a good idea to enable "Remove deleted items data after XX days"? Also is there any benefit of performing the defrag and compact function?
Natalia Lupacheva
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Re: Questions regarding Backup Policies and Maintenance

Post by Natalia Lupacheva »

Hi Jadon,

Configuration depends on your requirements.
If we take a look at your example with the document which is changed 7 times during the year: do you need to keep all restore points from the very beginning? Or maybe for the last year/some time gap?

Let me explain active fulls with example:
You configure Active Full running weekly on Mondays. Each Monday the new backup chain (full + the following incrementals) is created.
That means you can chose any restore point from this week and restore your machine to the chosen state.

But how to restore if something was corrupted on Monday?
For this case you can configure retention policy.
For example, you set it to 3 days, and this would mean when the new backup chain is created, the old one will still be available for 3 days. It gives you a time gap to decide if the old backup chain can be removed or not.
You can check this animated kb describing this process.

Please also check this kb to see another backup modes and how retention works in these cases, I hope it helps.
Do not hesitate to ask if you have any additional questions.

Thanks!
soncscy
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Re: Questions regarding Backup Policies and Maintenance

Post by soncscy »

Hey Jadon,

I can comment on a lot of these briefly as my clients as them all the time.

I think you're thinking of things a bit wrong. Image level backups act differently than in-guest file-level backups. Veeam can both (and more), so I think you're just maybe in the wrong spot.

If you want file versions, probably you want to add it as a File Share and do file backups. Image level through the hypervisor and volume level through the persistent agent are meant for restore points, the state of the "machine" or volume at a given day.

>7 restore points and I have a document that changes 7 times over the course of a year, I will only have restore point from the last 7 times the backup ran, correct?

Yes, this is correct -- if the file versioning matters, then really NAS backup which is built for files is best.

>Also, what is the benefit of configuring a Synthetic or Active full backup after the initial full backup has taken place? Wouldn't the incremental backup's take less space and provide the same data to recover?

Synthetic Fulls are basically to avoid incremental chains. Restore-wise, it's functionally the same and the data is the same, but increments depend on previous increments, which depending on your storage can increase restore operations because of more reads required as I get it, but also I see it as kind of old-fashioned. A lot of my clients run forever forward chains exclusively. With improvements in v10 to tape virtual fulls, tape-out isn't the issue it once was either with virtual fulls.

The storage guard corruption, as I get it, is both a check/warning, and an attempt to heal, but I suppose there is a threshold where the damage might be too great, and storage performance constraints might make daily health checks infeasible.

Remove Deleted items depends on if you anticipate the workload you protect to change a lot. One setup I remember they'd spin up projects for a few months, then decommission the project and its VMs -- everything was managed by datastore for the jobs, and Deleted VM retention meant that I don't have to concern myself with cleaning up no longer needed backups after our SLA guarantee for retaining them is done.

Compact and Defrag seems to usually be a net positive.
jadonr
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Re: Questions regarding Backup Policies and Maintenance

Post by jadonr »

Thanks for the answers. So configuring a repository as a file share would allow versioning? This I didn’t know.
soncscy
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Re: Questions regarding Backup Policies and Maintenance

Post by soncscy »

Not quite.

https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backu ... ml?ver=100

Give this a read through -- this is how Veeam would do file backups with versioning.


Or maybe I'm not getting your end goal.

What do you want versioned specifically? User files?
jadonr
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Re: Questions regarding Backup Policies and Maintenance

Post by jadonr »

Very interesting, thank you. Although this seems to now have become more complicated (because of my own ignorance). My server is mostly used to host user files and not VM's. So this means that configuring a File Share might be a good idea? I currently have VBR setup on this same server (I know it's not the best practice), so can the File Share with all the needed components (cache repo, proxy, backup repo, and archive repo) all be added at this same server? The files I would like to have versioning for would be documents and images.

I am also considering just using my OneDrive for Business to backup my documents and images which would also allow me the added flexibility of remote access to these when I'm on the go. Then use VBR for the remaining files and OS backups. Keep the feedback coming!
foggy
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Re: Questions regarding Backup Policies and Maintenance

Post by foggy »

Provided all the system requirements are met (keep in mind the total values for CPU/RAM), all the required components can run on the same server, technically this is possible (although doesn't make much sense from the backup strategy perspective).
jadonr
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Re: Questions regarding Backup Policies and Maintenance

Post by jadonr »

Finally had some time to continue researching this. I configured a File Share but now when I go to Files > File Shares > Drive letter > Add to Backup Job, I attempt to set the archive repository to Backblaze and encounter this error. Why?

Image

Can I get past this by configuring an additional Backblaze B2 repo with a different name?
jadonr
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Re: Questions regarding Backup Policies and Maintenance

Post by jadonr »

I can confirm the answer to my own question is yes, I can simply add an additional Repo.
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