How to show Backup-Restore-Points from "Rotated drives" after rotating the drives in Veeam B&R?

[AndyNorden]

Hello,

I have set up a new "Backup Copy"-job, which copies a "VMware Backup"-job. I have marked the repository for this as "Rotated drives", where are currently 2 external USB hard drives that changes on a weekly basis.
This works great so far, great feature. However, I can't see the restore points on the USB hard drive after change them. After I swapped the hard drives, Veeam B&R still shows me the restore points of the hard drive to which a backup was last written. Only when I save a new incremental restore point to the connected hard drive I can see all the restore points on that hard drive.

My question now is: How can I see and access the existing restore points on a hard drive without first writing a current restore point to the hard drive?

Thank you and best regards
Andreas

[Mildur]

Hi Andreas

Rotated disks can not be scanned. We show the most recent active backup copy chain. Which is on the last disk you had connected.
When you run a new backup copy job, the most recent restore point gets linked to the backup chain on the currently connected disk. Which makes this chain the active chain. And it come available for restore.

In a DR scenario, you can just connect your disk and import the backups for a restore. Daily restore from rotated disks should not be the normal approach.

Best,
Fabian

[AndyNorden]

Hi Fabian,

thank you for your answer!
Ok, when everything is right so far, it's not a problem for me. You are right, we hopefully never will be in the situation to restore from a rotated disk...

Best regards
Andreas

[Greg O]

Hi Mildur,

'When you run a new backup copy job, the most recent restore point gets linked to the backup chain on the currently connected disk. Which makes this chain the active chain.'

So then is there any reason why it would not continue the chain ?

I have been using rotated drives for a number of years. One disk for each Monday to Thursday, with the disk swapped on the respective the day the following week. And another 4 disks representing the Friday relative the week of the month. Backing up 15 VMs, I have split them up into 4 different backup jobs (relative to their importance and schedule) backing up to a folder on the disk relative to that backup, In the Properties of the Repository, I have last 2 options checked.

When the daily disk from the following week is loaded, sometimes Veeam will do an Incremental and continue the chain. Other times it will ignore the chain and create a new VBK file. I cannot find any pattern, that is, it might create one vib or 10 vib files before it creates a new vbk, or it ignore the chain and starts a new one - which then causes the disk to run out of space.


Any ideas
Thanks, Greg