vib vs vrb file

[sigurross]

Can somebody explain to me the difference between a vrb and a vib file? I just set up a new backup job and it is producing vib files instead of the vrb files like my other backups. Any insight would be appreciated? Thanks.

- Jason

[Gostev]

This depends on your selected backup mode:
- Incremental backup mode produces VIB files (I stands for incremental, VIB = Veeam Incremental Backup)
- Reversed incremental backup mode produces VRB files (R stands for reverse, VRB = Veeam Reverse-incremental Backup)

[sigurross]

Ha, should have RTFM!

Anyway, any subsequent effects when changing it back to reversed incrementals?

- Jason

[Gostev]

Job will take much longer to run first time after you make a switch, other than that nothing to worry about.

[chimera]

Gostev,
If this is the case, how come some of my backups that are set to "Incremental" with "Enable Synthetic Fulls" and "Transform Previous full backups into rollbacks" enabled, showing VBK and VRB files (if VRB is supposed to be reversed incremental?) Are VRB's not rollbacks? If they are reversed incrementals (as I think I might have initially had them as reversed incrementals, then changed to incrementals) why do they not change to VIB's?
I have limited disk space to store the backups on. Whats confusing me is all backups jobs are set to the same backup settings (as above) and all set to "Restore points to keep on disk: 5" - yet some jobs have VRB and VBK's, some jobs have VBK and VIB's (and the ones with VBK and VIB's have 1 x VBK and 9 VIB's???!) The backup jobs that have the VIB's are not retaining 5 backup files and do not appear to be transforming previous full backup chains into rollbacks, even though the job has this enabled.
Also, one particular has transform into rollbacks enabled yet it has 2 x VBK files in the folder? Its quite random which is confusing me. Version is 5.0.2.230
Cheers

[chimera]

Hmmm, just read your post here... http://www.veeam.com/forums/viewtopic.p ... 105#p25092

"This may happen when some VMs which were previously backed up by this job are no longer being backed up (for example, because they are no longer fall into the job scope). VM level retention in Veeam Backup attempts to preserve last X restore points of each VM (according to your retention policy), including thoses no longer being backed up. So, backup files containing corresponding VM data (restore points) will stay on disk until you acknowledge that VM is no longer needed. You do that by deleting VM from the corresponding backup under Backups node. Doing this will immediately clean up all backup files which were kept because of this VM."

I have backup jobs that I had created/deleted from the "Jobs" node in the past - which have the same name as the backup job now. I have now removed the old backups from the "Backups" node in Veeam as you mentioned above. It didn't "immediately" cleanup the backup files, but because the names of these jobs were the same as the ones now could that be causing the issue?

[foggy]

If the job is set to "Transform Previous full backups into rollbacks", it will contain different sets of VBK, VIB, and VRB files at different points in time. For example, on the day of transformation there are no VIB files, just the full backup and rollbacks. The next day the first VIB appears, etc. until the next transformation.

Regarding retaining the specified number of restore points, please look at this topic, which contains thorough explanation of the mechanism.

Hope this explains your confusion.