Weekly backups and synthetic fulls

[ori]

New Veeam 7 installation.. I have defined some jobs for weekly backups and I want to keep one month of restore points, which means a total of 4 backups each cycle.
What I don't understand is why can't I schedule the synthetic fulls? If I choose a day for synthetic fulls it will make an incremental run on that day and then the synthetic full - what would result in 4 full backups at the end of the month, while what I actually want is 1 full backup and 3 incremental points. Is there any way I can achieve this?

[Vitaliy S.]

Hello Ori,

If you just want to have 1 full backup and 3 incremental restore points, I would suggest using reversed incremental backup mode, that should be scheduled to run once a week.

Thank you!

[ori]

Thanks Vitaliy,
and what if reversed incremental mode is not an option?

[Vitaliy S.]

Then you can run forward incremental backup mode without enabling synthetic full

[foggy]

Yep, you could enable monthly active fulls instead of weekly synthetic to achieve what you're after.

[ori]

If I could schedule a synthetic for once a month I would have achieved what I want while enjoying the benefit of synthetic fulls, I just don't see the logic behind not giving an option to schedule them. I think there are many more use cases for that, i.e scheduling them outside the backup window so they won't utilize the repository while other jobs are backing up..

[veremin]

Hi, Ori,

If you want to run synthetic full on demand, you can put into use this script.

Please be aware, that the script still requires incremental backup run. However, scheduled via Windows Scheduler, this script can execute synthetic full backup at whatever time you want to, and, thus, bypass existing schedule.

Thanks.

[foggy]

If I could schedule a synthetic for once a month I would have achieved what I want while enjoying the benefit of synthetic fulls, I just don't see the logic behind not giving an option to schedule them.

This limitation is justified by performance reasons: How often do I need a full backup?