Method to keep long term full backups

[joe281180]

Hi,
We backup about 200 VMs using Veeam Backup and Replication 6.5 for VMware. Generally we keep 5 restore points for each job, most VMs are backed up daily, a few are backed up weekly.

The are a few VMs such as certain file servers for which we would like to retain some long term backups.
So for example a file server is currently backed up daily, with 5 restore points retained. What I would like to do is to continue this daily backup with 5 resotre points, but additionally keep a full backup (indefinitely) once per month, preferably on different storage.

Does anyone know of a way to do this? I've had a look at creating a file copy job, scheduled to run once per month but this doesn't seem to do what I am trying to do, because I can't set it to copy the most recent full backup file, because you have to specify a file name (the backup files have the date in their names, so I can specify a specific file, but not just the most recent file). I can't set up a copy job to just copy the folder containing the backup files for the VM that I am interested in either, because in that case each time the copy job ran, it would over write the last copy.

I'd be interested to hear from anyone who has set this up somehow, maybe there is a way to do it using the file copy jobs, that I have missed, or maybe some other feature of Veeam?

Many thanks
Joe

[veremin]

In the way I see it, the following PS script should answer your requirements; it will find a latest .vbk file in a given location and copy it to whatever place you’re willing to:

Code: Select all

$SourcePath = "Path to your repository"
$TargetPath = "Path to location to which you’re willing to copy .vbk-files"
$LastVBK = Get-ChildItem $SourcePath\*.vbk| Sort-Object CreationTime -Descending | Select-Object -First 1| Get-ChildItem -name 
Robocopy $SourcePath $TargetPath $LastVBK ;

Additionally, if you’re after some kind of GFS rotation scheme, kindly take a look at this topic.

Otherwise, wait till the version 7 is released. There will be a special job called Veeam Backup Copy Job that will handle the process of copying backup data offsite for you.

Thanks.

[yizhar]

Hi.

1. With current Veeam version 6.5, you can do the following:
Create an additional weekly backup job for the file servers, which will backup directly to the secondary long term repository.
Configure it with either reverse or forward incremental depending on your preferences.

2. With the upcoming Veeam version 7 you will be able to use the new "Backup Copy job" which will be different then the "File Copy job" in current version, and will be able to do what you're looking for.
Please note that the long term retension will require more disk space, so you can consider storing it on either software or hardware based deduplication system as repository.

Yizhar