Change backup type

[mdaldegan]

Hi,
we are backing up over WAN (10 Mbs) a large (800 GB) file server VM from a branch office in Amsterdam. For policy, we have been using Reverse Incremental so far, and everything is ok.
Now we are adding an additional big (400 GB) legacy disk to the VM, and have concerns that network troubles on the WAN might occurr during the first looong (> 100 hrs....) backup.
The question is: what happens to our last reverse incremental if the new "extended" job with the additional disk fails? Will we still have the last good full backup, or will it be gone?
Imagine we can take a local backup on a USB disk of the additional data, what options do we have to "merge" that in our original backup job?
And a related question: what happens if we turn a reverse incremental to plain incremental? will it just keep the last reverse as is and start incrementing? And can that be switched back again to Reverse any time later?

Thanks in advance for all suggestions and tips
Marco

[Vitaliy S.]

Hi Marco,

The question is: what happens to our last reverse incremental if the new "extended" job with the additional disk fails? Will we still have the last good full backup, or will it be gone?

Yes, you will be able to revert these changes back to the last "good" VM backup state.

Imagine we can take a local backup on a USB disk of the additional data, what options do we have to "merge" that in our original backup job?

You can map your backup job to this backup file and continue running incremental job runs over the WAN link.

And a related question: what happens if we turn a reverse incremental to plain incremental? will it just keep the last reverse as is and start incrementing? And can that be switched back again to Reverse any time later?

Here is an existing topic with the same question, check it out > can i switch from incremental to reversed incremental

Hope this helps!

[mdaldegan]

Thanks Vitaliy, on the "map your backup to this job" item I have an additional question.
I understand that I can map the additional backup files to a new job, but what if I want to merge the additional backup files to an existing job?
Say I have a VM already backed up over WAN with a large E: drive; an additional F: drive is added locally to the VM; I run a local backup job on the added F: drive to a USB repository, and have the USB drive shipped to me at the HQ.
Once I get my hands on the USB drive, can I get to generate a single job by merging the existing "E:" backup files with the new "F:" files?

Thanks

[Vitaliy S.]

Merging of backup files into a single file is not possible.