Cold site retention

[Zew]

I seriously spent 30 minutes writing up everything on my setup and a few common issues.

Since it took so long Veeam site asked me to sign in again, and I lost my whole write up. Not exactly a happy camper right now, So I'm gonna keep this post short this time.

When you have a linux server as a repo, and setup backup copy jobs on it. and setup retention periods on that job.

Are the restore points kept off site generated on site suing synthetic fulls or is it an Active Full and copes over all the data over the network. (this repo is off site over a 5 Mbps link.)

Thanks.

[Gostev]

In v8, they are generated on-site using synthetic fulls.
Which is obviously what you want with 5 Mbit pipe

In v9, Active Fulls will be available as an option too.

[Zew]

If the source backup job runs daily, and the backupcopy job recycles daily, and lets say you already have 2 of 4 weekly retentions (synthetic fulls). Then your job gets paused for a week for whatever reason, you disable the job from running. When you re-enable the job what happens? does it copy over all the new vib's in the chain and create a new synthetic full at the cold site(linux server) or will it copy over a whole new full?

In this scenario lets say the source also is set to create synthetic full once a week.So we will resume a synthetic full is created in the source chain before the backup copy job is re-enabled.

[veremin]

does it copy over all the new vib's in the chain and create a new synthetic full at the cold site(linux server) or will it copy over a whole new full?

Nope, it won't copy over a whole new full, neither will copy missing .vibs. What it will do is synthesize new incremental restore point in target location, based on the changes done since its last run. Thanks.

[Zew]

Alright, now here's one I still can't figure out exactly. How to reduce the size of the repo by directly editying a BackupCopys job retention period.

Example:

1) BackupCopy Job as 4 week retention set. 2 weekly Synthetic full points are available besides the normal chain vbk and vib's.

2) Repo starts to get over filled, (decision that these retentions are not really needed for this particular job/VM's) BackupCopy job Retention settings are removed.

3) If you manually restart the job, the retention jobs still show up under the Disk -> Job -> properties.

I was on call with a support rep, and we had to manually remove the .vbk files, this freed up space, but neither re-scanning the repo, or manually restarting the BackupCopy job would remove these point from the Disk -> Job -> properties.

I'm not really a fan of that considering the following scenario:

In a multi admin company I change retention periods. However the Disk properties for available points still shows those old weekly periods, but one would never be able to actually use them since they actually don't exist.

Thoughts?

[alanbolte]

I would expect the changes to be applied to Disk -> Job -> properties only the next time the job executes retention (merges an old increment into the full) and not at any other time.

[Zew]

Does that mean if you no longer have any retention it won't ever? Or you mean when it even just does it minimum two restore points, in this case when the backupjob recycles? or when the source gets a new incremement to copy?

[foggy]

Retention applies at the end of the successful job cycle. So once the job copies data during the next copy interval, it should cleanup obsolete records.

[Zew]

Be nice if you could manually re-catalogue, cause I have my backupcopy job to start every 7 day @ 8pm.

it's schedule is set to run Mon - Sat 8PM - 7AM.

I've been waiting a while for it to show the correct amount of restore points available.

If the server gets rebooted and the jobs cycle starts fresh (which I did thanks to windows updates), does that mean I have to wait a week before I'll see the change?

Main backup job runs once a week as well.

[foggy]

Yes, you need to wait for the job to perform successful regular cycle during the next interval.

[Zew]

Thanks for the reply foggy, it be nice if there was a manual way to catalog these job's in the case you have long interval periods. Waiting a week or more for an old removed point to be cleared seem a bit crazy.

[foggy]

I appreciate the feedback. To avoid such situations in future, you can use built-in repository space notifications as well as Veeam ONE capacity planning capabilities.