Rev.Incr: Keep multiple Full-Backups?

[SteveHeller]

Dear Veeam Forums

May I address you with several questions regarding reverse incremental backups:

First question: Is it possible to keep multiple full backups in the backup chain?
I have a rev.incr. job for daily backups:
Type: Reverse incremental
Active Full: Every Friday
Restore Points: 10
Schedule: Mon - Fri, at 10pm

I would like to keep the active full backups as full backups and not have them converted to rollbacks. Is this possible?

Second question: I have a monthly job configured as rev.incr:
Type: Reverse incremental
Active Full: First Sunday, every 3 month
Restore Points: 24
Schedule: Monthly, last Sunday at 12p,
I would like to have the following backup chain:
Rollback, Rollback, Active Full, Rollback, Rollback, Active Full, Rollback, Rollback, Active Full, and so on...
Is this possible with reverse incremental or do I need to switch to forward incremental?

Third question: What happens when the active full backup is scheduled to run at the same day/month than the normal jobs schedule?

Thank you all for your help and best regards.

Steve

[DGrinev]

Hi Steve and welcome to the community!

What is use case for multiple full backups in the backup chain?
If you would like to have a few independent reverse backup chains, you can schedule weekly active fulls and set retention for example to 21 restore points.

I would like to keep the active full backups as full backups and not have them converted to rollbacks. Is this possible?

Active fulls are not converted into rollbacks.

Instead of monthly backup job for archival purposes, I'd recommend you to use backup copy job with GFS retention.

Third question: What happens when the active full backup is scheduled to run at the same day/month than the normal jobs schedule?

On the scheduled day backup job will create a new full backup file and start a backup chain from it. Thanks!

[SteveHeller]

Dear DGrinev

Thank you for your reply.

The purpose for multiple active full backups is that I trust them more than rollbacks.
So when I store 10 restore point in the form of 2 active full (2 Fridays) and 8 (2x4) rollbacks I have at least two active full backups that I know will work to restore.
Would you recommend anything else?

Regarding backup copy job:
The client requires to store 24 monthly backups. I want to have an active full backup every 3 month and the rest as incrementals or rollbacks.
I did this with the backup job mentioned above. What is the advantage of a backup copy job compared to a normal active full backup?

Active fulls are not converted into rollbacks.

So this means when I schedule an active full in a reverse incremental job that this active full will stay an active full until the retention policy deletes it, right?

Thank you very much for your help.

[DGrinev]

Steve,

I'd recommend you to review existing discussion about How often do i need a full backup?
Also, you can use SureBackup for recoverability testing.

Regarding monthly job:
Why do you want to keep monthly rollbacks instead of full backups? I assume this related to storage space economy?

Regarding advantages of BCJ:
Let's say your primary full backup became corrupted, in this case the chain of rollbacks related to this full is unusable, so you will be able to restore from the last Friday full (data loss of 1 week).
Your second backup job can offer you only 1 restore point around 1 month ago (data loss from 2 to 4 weeks).
The Backup copy job will create a separate backup chain without impact on the source VMs as it copies data from the source repository, and in case of corruption on primary chain you will be able to restore with the most recent state of VMs.
Also, GFS retention will help to keep full backups monthly if you set it up.

So this means when I schedule an active full in a reverse incremental job that this active full will stay an active full until the retention policy deletes it, right?

Right!

Thanks!