Why is Veeam incapable of running active full and synthetic full within same job?

[DEG]

Greetings,

System info:
VM vCenter Server 6.7U2c (latest)
Veeam B&R 9.5U4 (latest)

Current setup:
Job: Daily VIB, weekly VBK.
Onsite repository: I’m saving 3 VBK + dynamic amount of VIB per job depending on server type: DC, file, O365 (VBO) are backed up every 4th hour, less important servers are backed up daily.
The Offsite backup server’s repositories (Backup Copy Job):
1Y, 6M, 4W. I only save VBK files, VIB are discarded.

Headache:
I *USED TO* run daily backup (VIB) + weekly synthetic full (VBK). Then I realized that running only synthetic backup, was not best practices and you recommend running an active full now and then (1-3 months).
So I imagined I just setup all my jobs (one per server) to this:
Daily backup (VIB)
Weekly Active Full on this day: First Saturday of each month.
Weekly Synthetic on these days: 2nd, 3rd, 4th and last Saturday of each month.

But this setup Veeam B&R 9.5 does not have.

Back in the old days I did it in Backup Exec: One year ahead I marked all the uneven (4th/5th) Saturday in every 3 months or so to also have a full backup. I could create 3 jobs per server(daily, weekly, monthly) that all pointed at the same media library (the server) and that was it.

If I in Veeam create 1 job called “daily” that will create 1 folder called “daily”. The first backup run will be 1 active full VBK and then it will be forever VIB.
If I in Veeam create 1 job called “weekly” that will create 1 folder called “weekly”. This will contain only 1 VBK file per week and have nothing to do with the daily VIB’s and give me the redundancy of the first daily VBK file in the daily folder.

My goal is to have daily diffs, weekly synthetic full, with one active full, real backup from the production SANs.

Please let me know how to create this backup job. It has nothing to do with the offsite. Only the actual VBS job.
Daily: Differential (.vib)
First Saturday of each month: Active Full Backup (.vbk) – read directly from our production SANs.
All remaining Saturdays of this month: Synthetic Full (.vbk) generated from the last actively full + differentials VIBs.

If this is not possible: what is the recommend solution then?

Multiple jobs per VM is OK, I just want the backup done right.

Thank you.

[nmdange]

Periodic Active Full is not needed if you enable backup file health check, or if you use SureBackup to verify your backups can be restored.

[Sloan]

I believe if you enable the synthetic full to be every Saturday, and then tell the active full to run the first Saturday, then only the active will run on that first Saturday. Veeam has the logic to know not to run both the synthetic and active full on the same day and the active full takes precedence.

[foggy]

Sloan is spot on, that's exactly how it works.

Also, I recommend reading this thread for our current recommendations regarding periodic active fulls.

[DEG]

Periodic Active Full is not needed if you enable backup file health check, or if you use SureBackup to verify your backups can be restored.

Thank you. I understand that, however as there is more than plenty time(window) and performance to backup directly from our all SSD 3PAR SANs, I just like the idea of a genuine active full backup.

I believe if you enable the synthetic full to be every Saturday, and then tell the active full to run the first Saturday, then only the active will run on that first Saturday. Veeam has the logic to know not to run both the synthetic and active full on the same day and the active full takes precedence.

Thank you. I actually tried this, and that did not work. It created first one .VBK on saturday and then one .VBK file on sunday. This lead to almost hitting low space on the primary VBS as all servers had 2 full VBK for one weekend.
Looking through my documentation, I can see that I set active full on saturday and the synthetic was setup for sunday.

Question:
How am I able to see if a VBK is active full or synthetically created?

Please confirm that if I do this, I can expect the desired output:
Screenshot of VBS:
https://ibb.co/tqK7kfk

[foggy]

How am I able to see if a VBK is active full or synthetically created?

If the job is already completed, you can only check the job session log to identify what kind of full it was.

Please confirm that if I do this, I can expect the desired output:

Yes, these settings are correct.

[DEG]

foggy - Thank you for the confirmation.

[DEG]

So again referring to the first screenshot in previous post.

And then this:
https://ibb.co/QJpNCQR

On the Backup Job, under Schedule Im setting the job to run Everyday at 22:00.
So .VIBs will be daily at 22:00.

When will the VBK be created?
- also at 22:00 on saturday for the full active/synthetic?

How do I setup so I have like this:
Weekdays: 22:00
Saturday: 06:00 or any other time than "22:00".

I don't wanna have the Full Active run on the same time(in the day) as the job runs on the weekdays, as the active full backup takes much longer time than the daily differential, so that would make many jobs run concurrently since the first job started would run say 12 hours, and all the next would start or be in queue.

I dont think the solution is to "force" the job to wait using the "backup windows" scheduler for permitted time, that is an akward and not easily visible configuration.
If the solution is two jobs thats fine, as long as I can have jobs start at 21:00-06 on weekdays and then utilize all hours on saturday and sunday for the backup jobs to run.

Thanks.

[foggy]

You can trigger the job via Windows Task Scheduler at an earlier time on Saturday. The second job run during the same day will be incremental. Here's the dedicated thread on that.

[DEG]

Thanks a lot foggy, Ill do that.

Just a note, I can't grasp that Veeam, with very very little effort - its pure GUI change, does not simply add a 5th radiobutton(placed as no 2 in the "Schedule" windows (https://ibb.co/QJpNCQR ) with same options as radiobutton 1.
1: Daily at this time - %time% - Options: %Days% = Sun, Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu, Fri;
2: Daily at this time - %time% - Options: %Days% = Sat;

Problem solved, pure GUI change.
Instead of "all" customers needs to create a PS for each Backup job and the use Windows Task Scheduler.

It really seems weird.

[foggy]

I believe the referenced thread contains all the reasoning behind, basically, it's not so big demand comparing to other features, the existence of a workaround, and moreover, this step is already pretty full with controls. But anyway, thanks for your feedback, it is always much appreciated.