Reformatting Offsite repository impact

[MathieuG]

Hello everyone,

I have a question about the Offsite repository and the Offsite backup job and I hope someone can help me to understand.

First of all, I have two NAS in iSCSI mode. One is installed locally in the datacenter and the other is located offsite. Everything works fine but we formatted the offsite repository incorrectly during the initial setup. The local main repository was formatted in ReFS but the offsite repository was formatted in NTFS by mistake. We cannot take advantage of this file system with Veeam for the offsite repository then the space used on the Offsite NAS for backups is high. My question is,:

What happens if we reformat the offsite repository. Will the backup copy job resynchronize all the content from the source (local repository) to the backup repository? I mean, what would be the best way to go if we want to reformat the offsite repository without losing the restore points? Unfortunately, we do not have a large enough disk to copy the files on the offist NAS.

Thanks in advance for your answers and help.

[Mildur]

You can't format the iSCSI LUN with reFS without loosing any data.
You need to copy all backups to another storage first.

Will the backup copy job resynchronize all the content from the source (local repository) to the backup repository

A copy Job will only copy the last restore point available in the source repo. You can find more about the restore point selection here:
https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backu ... ml?ver=110

Veeam Backup & Replication always copies the most recent restore points, even if a backup copy job runs for the first time and source backup repositories already contain chains of restore points.

Second, if you format your repo and delete the metadata in the process, your backup copy jobs will most likely fail the next time you run it. It's best to start a new backup copy job or find a temporary storage to move the data before formatting the backup repo with refs. After copying it back to the formated repo, you need todo a active full or a "backup file compact operation" operation to get FASTClone working.

[MathieuG]

Thanks you very much Mildur for your answer.

In this case, what we can do for exemple if you want to implement an offsite repository backup task a few months / year after the configuration of the main task and you want to make sure that all past restore points is sync to the new offsite repository. Is it mandatory to create both tasks at the same time if we want to have the same restore points on each repository?

[Mildur]

You're welcome.
Sorry, I don‘t understand you question.

If you create a backup copy job (i think, that is what you call a task), then it will only copy the latest restore point ans not all of them from the first backup Repository. If you want to have all RP‘s on the second backup repository, you need to copy them manually. They will get dehydrated of course. No FastClone support with copying it manually with explorer or robocopy.

With Veeam vNext, there could be some sort of solution to copy entire backup repos with fastclone to a new location. There are no more information, how this feature will work. We will see when it's ready
This was announced at VeeamOn 21, but without any ETA.