Tower of Hanoi

[jeffshead]

I absolutely love Veeam but one detractor is the fact that it does not appear to support a Tower of Hanoi retention scheme. I have used Acronis B&R for many years (bugs and all) because they support that scheme. It is so nice to have 14 backup points, for example, and have some of them date back further than 14 days.
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The Tower of Hanoi rotation method is more complex. It is based on the mathematics of the Tower of Hanoi puzzle, using a recursive method to optimize the back-up cycle. Every tape corresponds to a disk in the puzzle, and every disk movement to a different peg corresponds with a backup to that tape. So the first tape is used every other day (1, 3, 5, 7, 9, ...), the second tape is used every fourth day (2, 6, 10, ...), the third tape is used every eighth day (4, 12, 20, ...).

A set of n tapes (or other media) will allow backups for 2n−1 days before the last set is recycled. So, 3 tapes will give 4 days' worth of backups, and on the 4th day Set C will be overwritten; 4 tapes will give 8 days, and Set D is overwritten on the 9th day; 5 tapes will give 16 days, etc. Files can be restored from 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, ..., 2n−1 days ago.
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Am I just overlooking this option in the Veeam settings?

[HannesK]

Hello,
you are not overlooking anything. And your description shows the reason: it's more complex and built for tape.

Veeam tries to be less complex and is built for disk

Can you describe what restore / backup SLAs you have? I never had a situation, where it was not possible to achieve that with normal retention or GFS (grandfather - father - son)

Best regards,
Hannes

[jeffshead]

Simple is what I like! One disk backup job that runs daily at 11PM.

I would like to see 14 restore points from a single backup job but not 14 consecutive days. A retention policy similar to below:

Restore point 1: Most recent backup
Restore point 2: 1 day ago
Restore point 3: 2 days ago
Restore point 4: 3 days ago
Restore point 5: 4 days ago
Restore point 6: 5 days ago
Restore point 7: 7 days ago
Restore point 8: 9 days ago
Restore point 9: 14 days ago
Restore point 10: 21 days ago
Restore point 11: 30 days ago
Restore point 12: 60 days ago
Restore point 13: 90 days ago
Restore point 14: 365 days ago

[veremin]

Such retention will be more or less possible (besides Restore point 8: 9 days ago), once we release GFS for primary backup jobs:

Daily: 6
Weekly: 3
Monthly: 3
Yearly: 1

Thanks!

[jeffshead]

...once we release GFS for primary backup jobs...

So you are stating that this type of retention cannot be done with one job, yet? I also didn't see a setting for de-duplication.

[HannesK]

correct. GFS on primary backup jobs is planned for the next version (planned for end of the year)

deduplication is in storage -> advanced of each job. please see user guide

[HannesK]

well, you restore point 8 is also no problem if you configure 9 daily. then you will have also 8 days ago, but usually one more is better than one missing

you can even do it today with help the backup copy job. I don't know, whether you use tape, but if not, you probably want to copy the backups to a second (offsite) location.

[veremin]

I also didn't see a setting for de-duplication.

There is no deduplication among weekly, monthly and yearly backups, as those backups should be completely independent from each other - if that's what you're asking about. Thanks!