[ARCHIVED] Veeam Backup & Removable Media (rotated drives)

[sgatke]

Well, if anyone with a QNAP nas should run into the same question, I have solved this by using the built-in Qnap Backup --> External Device --> Synchronize feature.
This syncs the contents of my Veeam backup folder on the nas to my external USB hard drive, and I can schedule it to any time I want.

There might be a little manual setup each time I rotate my USB disks, but I am prepared to live with that.

Important note: The 'Synchronize' feature deletes all old content on the USB disk. (this seems obvious for most of us, I am sure, but judging from the Qnap forums it is not obvious for some people).

[Fiskepudding]

We also use a Qnap as repository for our weekly full backups, witch we offload with scheduled tasks and robobopy, using a mainstream PC with USB3 ports and docking for SATA disk.
PC has two NICs witch gives us 2 Gigabits worth of bandidth, leaving the disk the bottleneck.
If your qnap is not brand new you are stuck with USB2?.

May I ask what speed you get in real life?
If you have USB3 on your Qnap, just disregard my question

[sgatke]

We don't have USB3 on our QNAP, unfortunately.
The speed I got, was somewhere around 24mb/s

[angelo]

good afternoon

I have a 1GB HD is getting crowded and wanted to know how to configure Veeam Backup automatically rotate the plot before

thank you

[severt]

I know this has been asked several times before, but after weeding through the forum I have not found a solution that works for me.
We create a incremental backup every working day, and saturday a full backup to a Qnap NAS.
However, this NAS is placed in the same building as the server, so in case of a fire we lose everything.
A remote backup is not possible since fiber is not in place yet. Through DSL is also not possible because of the amount of data.

So we decided it's necessary to store a weekly bacup on a device that someone can take home.
However, in case of theft we don't want our data to be on the street, so it has to be encrypted.
They also don't want to work with tapes.

So what solutions are left in my situation?
I thought the best way was to work with external hard-drives in perhaps another Qnap NAS.
However, I'm not sure how this is going to work when someone takes a hard-drive out of the nas, and places the one he took with him the week before in the device. (so working with 2 hdd's.)
Is this even possible?

I would love to hear your solutions.

Thank you,
Dennis

[dellock6]

Two quick questions first:
- does you qnap has external usb connectors?
- how big is a full backup?
If 1 is yes and 2 is less than a common usb drive, you can plug the usb disk into the Qnap and use its backup features to copy its content to the usb disk, and then unplug it and bring it home. About encryption, there are probably some encrypted usb disks around.

Luca.

[lluisclemente]

Hi there.
I'm experiencing the same problem as everyone...
Veeam 6.1 , w2k8R2.
I wonder if any of you has achieved to make something like this work :
1)Run backup normal Schedule
2a) Fails -> Deletes previous backup + Retry Backup
2b) Fails -> Deletes previous backup + Runs Full Backup

Is there any place where I could configure something like this?
I mean in veeam, not Windows or external scheduler.
Is there any log file that a monitoring system could read to make this ?
I get emails but don't know if there is any log or chance for a snmp redirection.

Regards.

mbelcourt wrote:I have the same problem when I use a USB hard drive.

The temporary solution (hopefully temporary) I've found, is to delete the job was done the day before.
1) go to "Backup & Replication"
2) go to the subfolder "Backup"
3) Right click on the job
4) Select "Remove from backups"

You could also easily script the "Remove from backups" tasks via PowerShell and have the server automatically do this just prior to the backup run.
f there are people who want the script (Powershell) to automate the deletion of backups instead to do it manually.
Code: Select all
Add-PSSnapin VeeamPSSnapin
$smtpServer = "10.10.10.10"
$msg = new-object Net.Mail.MailMessage
$smtp = new-object Net.Mail.SmtpClient($smtpServer)
$msg.From = "FlushBackup@test.com"
$msg.To.Add("me@test.com")
$msg.Subject = "enter your subject"
$msg.IsBodyHTML = $true
$msg.Body = Get-VBRBackup | ConvertTo-Html
$smtp.Send($msg)

get-vbrbackup | remove-vbrbackup -Confirm:$false

[foggy]

Lluis, could you please clarify what kind of backup scenario you are trying to perform?

[lluisclemente]

Sorry
As in the topic
"Veeam Backup & Removable Media (rotated drives)"
He have a W2k8 veeam 6.1 server , that doesn't have enought space to make backups on local disc.
So we're using external usb ones with rotation (not supported by veeam)

The user on remote site is lazy, doesn't know much IT, some times forgets to change tape/disk on scheduled date, so next day fails
Error: Client error: File does not exist. File: [E:\VMbackup\***]
If we run manually a full it works.
So I wondered if there was any way to automate full runing or something like that, to troubleshoot this.

It's due to a human error, and due to the lack of local disk on the backup server.

Regards.

[foggy]

So we're using external usb ones with rotation (not supported by veeam)

The ForceCreateMissingVBK registry key (discussed in this topic above) was introduced right with this scenario in mind. Have you tried to use it?

[mnario]

I am trying to setup for a client.they have two usb hard drives that they want to swap every week for off-site storage protection. What would be the best method to get this done? Please advise.


Thanks!

[murdocmk]

Here's what we're doing for a couple of clients and this has been working well so far:

1) We have Veeam B&R 6.1 running on W2K8 R2 in a VM
2) We added 2 additional "offsite" backup jobs, which are configured to write the backups to different repositories. For example, "Offsite Job 1" writes to the N: drive and "Offsite Job 2" writes to the O: drive. The N: and the O: drives are just drive letters assigned to 2 external USB drives.
3) We have a scheduled task that kicks off a WSH script on the Veeam server each night. The script checks to see if the N: or O: drives are mounted, and kicks off the appropriate Offsite Job for that drive using a Veeam powershell script. Right now the logic we're using is:
- If both the drives are mounted, kick off Offsite Job 1 and send an email warning that both drives are connected (one is supposed to be offsite, right?)
- If only one of the drives is mounted, kick off the corresponding Offsite Job and don't send any kind of warning email. Veeam will email when the job completes (or fails).
- If neither drive is mounted, don't kick off any jobs and send an email indicating the offsite backups failed because the backup drives weren't mounted.

We also place a zero-length file on the root of each of the external drives, which labels which offsite job that drive is associated with. That's because our script will attempt to hunt for an offsite drive if it can't find it at the expected drive letter. In practice we've never seen a drive get assigned the wrong drive letter when it's plugged back into the VM, but we wanted to make the script deal with that situation gracefully. For example, if it finds that the Offsite Job 1 drive is at F: instead of N:, it will remount it as N: and then run the Veeam Offsite Job 1. The remounting is necessary, since the repository is expecting things to be at N:.

Some notes about this approach:
- We've been using reverse incremental jobs with a couple weeks of history. It seems to be the easiest job type for offsite disks (at the cost of longer backup times), but maybe there are other options as well. We don't know exactly when they'll get swapped, so periodic fulls may get missed, etc.
- Since there are two jobs, each writing to different disks, we don't have to worry about missing incremental files. If the disk isn't present then the job doesn't run.
- Depending on how often the disks are swapped, the job that runs right after the disks are swapped can take a while to complete (a few hours). But, it's still just the differences since the last time the job was run.
- This approach doesn't solve the need for encryption. We could incorporate TrueCrypt into this process though.. definitely something we'd like to do.
- External USB drives passed through to a VM have pretty poor performance. The nightly backup times aren't bad, but the initial full backup to the USB drive might take quite a while (even days). If we absolutely needed higher performance we'd use VMDirectPath and a USB3 PCIe card, but we haven't needed to do that yet and would prefer not to.


If anyone wants to know more about this or has any questions or feedback, please let me know.

Thanks,
Mark

[QBC_ICT]

Good afternoon .
I have read a lot of posts about seeding replica backups but I would like to know the best practice for a 3tb removable backup. I would like to rotate 3 x 3tb drives (one each week) and would like to seed them from existing reversed incremental backups we do each night . Can you tell me the best procedure for this.

Can I copy across the latest reversed incremental backup onto a 3tb caddy and then that will do ?
If so , what files do I need to copy. ?
If i was to do that can I then "update that backup" on a caddy with a separate job a few days later?

regards Rick

[jnelson2000]

Mark

Can you post the wsh script? This is exactly what I am looking for. Any help is appreciated.

[murdocmk]

I emailed the script to jnelson2000.

I'd really post the script here if I could, but I don't see any way to attach a file to a post, and just pasting it into the body is going to get messy. I've been sending 4 files to those that are interested: the WSH script, the two powershell job scripts and a short text file describing the installation.

If you'd like to download the zip file I've been sending out, here's a URL that you can pull it from:
http://www.lanternsec.com/dl/offsite-script.zip

Couple things to note: Because of the way I’m sending emails in the script the machine running the script (the Veeam VM or physical server most likely) will need Internet access. It does pull a few CDO configuration items from the http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/ namespace when sending the notification email. I want to revisit that at some point and remove that dependency, but for now it still exists.

Thanks,
Mark

[umenz]

Hello,

This thread started 3 Years above... time to ask before we start a new topic with same subject.
I have read some other post like: - v6 - How to have a local and off-site backup copy? but not an answer for a small business site.
WAN Backup is no alternativ solution on a asymetric Line with very low upload bandwith.

In this case for a small customer is moving Data with cardridge Based Media to a second side mandatory.

Is a solution or native support for removable Harddrives like RDX planned for a next release?
I must decide to implement a solution or wait (hope) for native support.

Is the solution some posts before the actual state of the Art ?

thanks

Ulrich

[foggy]

Ulrich, the solution discussed in this thread (specifying a registry key value for the backups to be created on a newly inserted disk) allows to implement the removable drives scenario.

[trompele]

Hi All,
What is best practice for creating full backup on every job overwriting previous one ?
I have one on-site NAS that I do daily incrementals to.
I also have 2x Small mobile NAS for offsite backup (Synology DS213+).
Intention is to use these small ones for full backup that is to be made on weekly basis with rotation (one Thursday night full backup goes to nas1 next one goes to nas2).
What is the best way to set this up. I dont want to enable incrementals, i want to wipe previous backup and write new full one every thursday.

[greenpower]

hello i am pretty much new to veeam and backup in general. I would like to know if it is possible to backup to rdx drive with three rdx cassets every week in a month.

I really tried hard to somehow configure a the backup job that would make a full backup in the first week of the month to the first cassete. In the second week do a full backup to the second cassete. In the third week would do a full backup to the third cassete and in the last week would do a full backup to the first cassete again. The issues i have are:

1. How can i make just a full backup in veeam without any incremental backups?
2. How can i run the fourth backup in the month on the first cassete again? (it gives me an error that the previous backup is missing - but i just want it to overwrite the old backup)


Can somebody give me a hint or a best possible solution?

thank you very much

[veremin]

You have been merged to the existing discussion, so, please take a look at the answers provided above.

How can i make just a full backup in veeam without any incremental backups?

There are two ways how you can perform only full backup without incremental:

1. Schedule Active Full to run every day.
2. Otherwise, use PowerShell script mentioned in this topic along with Windows Task Scheduler to start your job.

How can i run the fourth backup in the month on the first cassete again? (it gives me an error that the previous backup is missing - but i just want it to overwrite the old backup)

In order to avoid this error the aforesaid regkey should be implemented.

Hope this helps.
Thanks.

[greenpower]

Hello,

thanks again for the fast and great support.

i have another question regarding VBR.

I would like to do a full backup every thursday in every week of the month. I have three RDX Casettes. This means that the first casette which will take the first full backup is going to be plugged in again in week four. To take the weeks four full backup. But veeam seems not to delete or overwrite the old full backup from week 1. How can this be accomplished?

Another quesion is. Given the scenario above. Could VBR take full backup from week one and first casette and do an incremental backup on it in week four and turn it into an full backup when retention policy is set to 1?


thanks again!

[foggy]

I would like to do a full backup every thursday in every week of the month. I have three RDX Casettes. This means that the first casette which will take the first full backup is going to be plugged in again in week four. To take the weeks four full backup. But veeam seems not to delete or overwrite the old full backup from week 1. How can this be accomplished?

You can delete the old backup either manually or using some scheduled task before running the job.

Another quesion is. Given the scenario above. Could VBR take full backup from week one and first casette and do an incremental backup on it in week four and turn it into an full backup when retention policy is set to 1?

You will need to have three different jobs to achieve that and schedule them to run when the corresponding cassette is inserted.

[veremin]

As to scheduled task, from my perspective something like this should answer your requirements:

Code: Select all

Asnp VeeamPSSnapin
$DriveToClean = "Name of the drive you’re willing to clean"
$Job = Get-VBRJob -name (read-host "Enter name of backup you're going to start")
Remove-Item $DriveToClean\* -Force -Recurse -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
Start-VBRJob -job $Job 

Firstly, this script will ask you to enter the name of the job you’re going to start. Then, it will clean the specified drive or folder. Finally, it will start the given job.

This script can be scheduled via Windows Scheduler to run at any given time.

Hope this helps.
Thanks.

[sbostedor]

I am working with a client that has a Veeam server backing up data to local SATA disks in a workstation. There are currently 3 4TB drives and they are beginning to fill up.

I'd like to build a solution for them using external eSATA drives and a rotation scheme but I'm not sure if Veeam can accommodate this. They want to keep every daily backup forever and with the deduplication that Veeam offers, I can see that this could be a reality .. maybe.

I want to let them fill up 2 external 4TB drives with Veeam backups and then when they are almost full, pop out the drives and put in 2 new drives. Using the same backup jobs, I'd like Veeam to just pick up and continue backing up to the new media while remembering the old media.

What is the best way to pull this off?

[lwarner8]

VEEAM peeps,

We need to implement an off site backup solution using 2 network drives and rotating them every week. Has anyone successfully accomplished this? I guess it would work but it is not a supported solution or best practice used by VEEAM. We have 10 servers that would need to be backed up nightly and around 15 servers that will require monthly backups. The only idea we have would require a full backup on the first day of every week of the 10 servers and incrementals for the remainder of the week. Any ideas of what would be most efficient and reliable would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!

Lori

[mephisto]

Hi gents,

I have a client that is on a location without good broadband and uploading their VMs to a cloud storage is a bit difficult to prove possible until they get a fiber line. For offsite backups, I'm thinking on a way to have a ESATA enclosure or something similar plugged into a VMware ESXi host, they they would swap the drives every day in and out for the backup jobs. I'm afraid of which way would be better to automate this as I don't want to connect every single day to the ESXi host and attach the disks to the VM and make the backup jobs run manually.

USB disks in this case are not much my cup of tea first because the USB3 supposed for Windows guests that is not present so far I know, second that I had so manby failed USB disks in the past that I would prefer a few enterprise grade SATA disks on the ESATA enclosure to give me some peace in mind.

Would you guys be able to suggest me some other alternatives or how I can achieve what I'm looking for using the ESATA enclosure please?

Thanks you!

[veremin]

You have been merged to the existing discussion which is primarily concerned with rotated drives scheme. So, kindly see the answers provided above.

Thanks.

[mweiler]

Hello,
we now have many customers with the same scenario:
The regular ESXI backup goes to a ISCSI SAN, but the customers want to take away rotating USB drives.
Same question as before by mnario:
How is the best practise for backing up in a second backup job, e.g. once every week, to rotating USB drives?
The registry hack "creating missing..." did not help. Backup jobs are regularly cancelled due to missing VBKs.
And, which backup strategy / settings are recommended in general for this type of setting?

I can imagine MANY customers still have the same question and long to have a whitepaper they could simply follow step by step using VEEAMs own means to achieve this.

Thanks in advance!!

[Vitaliy S.]

Hello,

The registry hack "creating missing..." did not help. Backup jobs are regularly cancelled due to missing VBKs.

Can you please clarify that? What registry hive did you use to put that reg key?

Thank you!

[amat1976]

All

I am looking to backup using 4 Nas Boxes , ideally I am trying to achieve the following

Week 1 - Backup to Nas1
Week 2 - Backup to Nas2
Week 3 - Backup to Nas3
Week 4 - Backup to Nas4

The only way I can see to do this is either Manually change the backup job to change repository at the start of each week or create a separate job for each week and disable all other weeks, is there a way to schedule each week to backup to specific repository or is this the only way to do it ?

many thanks