Question about switch from Forever Forward Incremental to Reverse Incremental

[GeyerIT]

Hello all,

new here in the forum (and relatively new to Veaam B&R). After a search I did not find a suitable topic in the forum.

For security reasons, the management would like to change the backups to reverse incremental backups. So far we have Forever Forward Incremental Backups.

My question after the switch: How do the previous incremental backups behave? I know that Veeam makes a full backup first, but I don't know whether the old incremental backups can still be used in an emergency or whether the restore points have to be created from scratch.

[Gostev]

Hello, please don't make this change as we're in the process of removing this backup mode completely in V13. There's no reason to use it these days. And it certainly does not add reliability or security, in fact it's the opposite: it prevents you from using immutable backups feature. Thanks

[tyler.jurgens]

What was the reasoning around the decision to switch to reverse incremental backups? I find there is a lot of misconceptions around why people want to use that mode that maybe we can help you dispel for your management team.

[GeyerIT]

Thanks for your posts.

The answer of removing the reverse incremental mode was sufficient for staying at forever forward incremental.

"I find there is a lot of misconceptions around why people want to use that mode that maybe we can help you dispel for your management team."
- That was also my thought. Fortunately, the reason for the end of the reverse mode is sufficient for the management.

[Poweruser]

as here are so many problems in understanding, i think veeam lacks a very good documentation about ALL details of these modes in a comparison table.
there MUST be an effort if using reverse incremental. otherwise it had never been implemented.
anyway IF and only IF, my repo is always growing/maintainend, Gostev is right.
But in MY (and many other "old" backuppers mind), they create tapes or make a out-of-band copy of Repo files to an external tape/harddisk whatever...
when they just have to take one file, they will always have the latest version. otherwise they have to store Base (full) and all deltas to tape.
currently veeam does not clarify exactly what is written to tape.
i wish a more detailed info, what files/tapes i would need for a full recover. B&R should show if a tape will work standalone or not.
i (and most others) never want a daily tape which does not work stand-alone.

the goal is to have sth. (physically) in the hand, which includes EVERYTHING without exceptions.