Why are Replica restore points necessary

[erolleman]

From what I understand a Replica restore point is basically a backup of the replica (Please correct me if I'm wrong. This could be why I am confused). If the production VM is being backed up why would a person back up the replica?

I just started supporting a system that uses Veeam, so I'm new to it. Both the production VM's are backed up (Veeam appears to use the terminology "Restore Points" which I take to mean back-ups) as well as the replicas of the VMs. The current configuration has 14 "Restore Points" for the production VM's under the backup node and in the replica node the settings of each replica there is 4 "Restore Points". Aren't the 4 "Restore Points" redundant to that of the "Restore Points" of the 14 for the production VMs?

Please help.

[Vitaliy S.]

Hello Eric,

Restore point is not the backup of the replica, restore point just represents a point in time of your VM image which can be used in failover operations. Restore points for replicas are required when you want to quickly failover to one of the availalbe VM states.

Please see existing topics for further reading: Backup, Replica or both?, Which method to use - backup, replication, or both? and The real world use of Veeam Replication

Hope this helps!

[J1mbo]

Depends. You need at least a couple; otherwise what would happen if the problem happened whilst the current replication was running?

[Gostev]

Or, what if you spot corruption late (as it often happens), when it is already replicated successfully to replica? If you do not have earlier replica restore points, you cannot really use your replica...

[erolleman]

So restore points are more like snapshots in VMWare?

[erolleman]

For each back-up job there is a set amount of restore points:

It appears that most of the VMs here have one back-up job that is only incremental, but has something called "synthetic-fulls" and "Transform previous full backup...". Does this mean it somehow merges some incremental back-ups into a full once in a while?
This back-up job also has 14 restore points as well. Does this mean there are always 14 snapshots of each VM and backups being done.

[dellock6]

Uhm, you are mixing up replica and backup jobs....
Replica restore points ARE VMware snapshots, in fact you can find them directly in vClient when connecting to vCenter or a single ESXi server.

Luca.

[Vitaliy S.]

It appears that most of the VMs here have one back-up job that is only incremental, but has something called "synthetic-fulls" and "Transform previous full backup...". Does this mean it somehow merges some incremental back-ups into a full once in a while?

Please take a look at our User Guide (page 26) for more information on synthetic fulls, transforms and etc.