Replication Job Deleted - New Replication Job Setup

[rizks_2000]

Still testing out the trial version of the product, which we really like. Ran into something today which is a bit confusing. Back at the beginning of March, we performed a successful replication job and then did a couple incremental jobs over the next couple of days. All were successful. I was out of office for a couple weeks and so before I left, decided to leave the replicas as they were over at our target location but deleted the actual replication job itself from my Veeam Backup server. Today, I created new replication job for same server. Set up schedule to run the job daily at a specific time. My thought was that since this was a new job, it would create an entirely new replica. When the job ran the first time, it failed telling me it already exists. Retry interval set to 2 minutes, and this time it ran successfully. This was actually a good thing as I didn't want to run a complete new "full" replica of the server but was of course expecting to. What is happening here? I'm really just trying to understand. Can I not have differing replicas of the same server residing on the same replica target location? I'm sure I am missing something or not quite understanding it. Hope you can read through the initial failure message I got.

Session Details
Status Error Start time 3/16/2010 10:40:07 PM Details

Total VMs 1 End time 3/16/2010 10:40:34 PM
Processed VMs 1 Duration 0:00:26
Successful VMs 0 Total size 40.00 GB
Failed VMs 1 Processed size 0.00 KB
VMs in progress 0 Processing rate 0 KB/s

Processed Objects
VM name Status Start time End time Total files Processed files Total size Processed size Processing rate Duration Details
SOA-APPWORX-P Error 3/16/2010 10:40:17 PM 3/16/2010 10:40:34 PM 0 0 40.00 GB 0.00 KB 0 KB/s 0:00:16 Checking destination Backup file "/vmfs/volumes/4b84295e-5821387b-cfeb-001c23d75ab3/VeeamBackup/SOA-APPWORX-P(vm-3105)/replica.vbk" already exists.

[Vitaliy S.]

Hello Anthony,

Thank you for your post, I've just tried this scenario and was able to reproduce this behaviour. When you've deleted the original job and created the new one with the same name, the job failed with the error that replica already existed, however on the retry it replaced the VBK file that's why it ran successfully. It's seems to be a bug, I've already submitted this bug in our internal bug tracking system.

If you have two records for the same replica under replica node in the backup console (as I had in my scenario), you may remove the first one and continue using the second one.

Thank you!

[rizks_2000]

Here is my concern. Upon further review of the successful retry, I can now go out to Replicas and I see the original Replica on the 1st of March, and then roughly 5 restore points. Then a bit further down, I see the new Replica (one I just did last night) and it says Full Synthetic. Seems a bit odd to me. On my original Full Synthetic I ran across my WAN to another location, it took 4:47 minutes to complete. Last nights took 25 minutes which is odd if Veeam is calling that a true Full Synthetic. Maybe I'm not understanding the technology, but how can I go back to my March 1 Replica and create a new job which just performs the next logical restore point? Right now, under Replicas within Veeam, I have to instances for the same VM. One is the March 1 replication job, and then under that are the subsequent 4 or 5 restore points. Then down a bit in my list of replicas, there is a new entry for 3/16/2010 for the same server. Under this one, I see one synthetic full. I just skeptical that is a full backup. So how does it work for restore, I restore the 3/16 full first and then restore to one of my earlier restore points off of the 3/1 replication job?

Replica: APPWORX-P (Retry)
Created at: 3/16/2010 10:26:14 PM Created by: NSFCU\********
Session Details
Status Success Start time 3/16/2010 10:42:38 PM Details

Total VMs 1 End time 3/16/2010 11:08:32 PM
Processed VMs 1 Duration 0:25:53
Successful VMs 1 Total size 40.00 GB
Failed VMs 0 Processed size 40.00 GB
VMs in progress 0 Processing rate 26 MB/s

Processed Objects
VM name Status Start time End time Total files Processed files Total size Processed size Processing rate Duration Details
SOA-APPWORX-P Success 3/16/2010 10:42:48 PM 3/16/2010 11:08:32 PM 5 5 40.00 GB 40.00 GB 27 MB/s 0:25:43

[Vitaliy S.]

Anthony,

I understand your concern, but as soon as you've deleted the replica job, you won't be able to re-use the old replica files, you can only do a restore (File Level, Failover, VM files) . This happens because when you create the new job it has a new ID in Veeam SQL DB, that's why the original message told you about existence of the vbk file, which referred to another job despite of the same name. So there is no way to continue replication of your VMs after job removal.

When the original vbk is replaced, it means that all the refferences to vrb files are no longer available, so you need to remove old record for replica files in the veeam console. As I've already said that's a bug, which shows up for retries only. Thank you again for submitting it!

On the retry procedure job created another FullSynthetic backup, I would recommend you to delete all the files and begin replication process from scratch. Also I'd be very interested to see what time will it take comparing you your previous initial runs.

Thank you!

[rizks_2000]

Yes, thanks. I've deleted all my test replicas and am starting over. Can you tell me what the difference is between Remove from Replicas vs. Delete from Disk? I deleted from disk because I wanted my storage space back. I'll be kicking off two replicas later this evening so yes, will let you know how quick they were. My thought is they will take as long or roughly as long as the my original replicas jobs back at the beginning of March.

[Vitaliy S.]

If you choose to perform Remove from Replicas, it will remove all the records from Veeam configuration SQL DB only, this procedure doesn't actually delete the files from the target datastore. In this case you will be able to manually failover to a replicated VM by starting it using vSphere Client.

As for Delete from disk operation it wipes out replicated VM completely (all the records from SQL DB as well as VM files from target datastore), so you could create a new job with the same name again.

[rizks_2000]

thanks