Backup Job Schedule & GFS Advice

[kcinto]

Hi all,

I'm new to Veeam, and also to setting up back up jobs in general. I think we need to change our set up (someone else initially configured it), but I'm not sure how to go about that.

We currently have a synthetic full running every day, and it's set to back up every 4 hour. The retention policy is set to 56 restore points. We run are running out of storage REALLY fast, and currently the backups are not able to run anymore.

I've set up two backup jobs to replace the old two. They each are set to keep 10 restore points, and they're set to full backup Sundays, and synth. full on Thursdays. What I'm unsure of is if a retention policy of 10 is enough to have the incremental backups running every 4 hours in the new jobs too.

If any more info is needed I'm happy to supply, just let me know.

Thanks in advance,
Keaton

[Shestakov]

Hi Keaton and welcome to the community!

Answering your question, yes, with 10 restore points you will have backups of last 40 hours.

I would start from you goals and requirements. Do you need backups of every 4 hours? Do you have business hours or you need 6 backups a day? Does 1 of them need to be a full backup?
How many restore points/days you want to have?

Thanks!

[kcinto]

The main goal is to store backs ups longer than we are currently able to. I'd like to be able to keep restore points for at least a month, ideally.

We don't necessarily need every 4 hours, that's just how it's set up now, so I was trying to reproduce that more efficiently. I think once or twice a day would also be fine. There does not need to be a full backup a day, that's taken out in the jobs I made.

I'd like to implement a GFS schema, and my understanding is that's done through backup copies? If I could set up a normal, weekly incremental backup, and then have copies of that saved biweekly and monthly, that would be good. I'm not sure how the backup copies work though.

Thank you!

[Shestakov]

You are correct, GFS schema can be achieved with backup copy jobs. The general recommendation is to have a short chain in primary repository and longer keeping historical backups in secondary.
Primary backup job may run more often than the backup copy. It`s up to you to decide how many restore points you need.

[kcinto]

Okay, I appreciate the help!

[Shestakov]

You are welcome!
I would also suggest reading the corresponding User guide section and best practices blog post.