Veeam Scheduling Question

[kevin@wei.com]

Veeam Community,

I am having a tough time figuring out how to schedule the follow config and I was hoping someone might have some insight. I must say, Veeam doesn't make things easy to schedule. I'd love to see just a calendar and check boxes as to what I want done when.

So here is the situation and please let me know if changing it would help too. I have two sites, A and B. Both sites A and B have a physical Veeam server each. I also have a Veeam etnerprise server running in a Veeam. I perform backups every night to a Quantum dedupe device at each site. I am using standard incrementals and monthly fulls. The fulls are staggered throughout the month to minimize impact to the environment. We are having slow performance on our Quantums and are currently working with Quantum to correct this.

I have been asked to keep as many dailys on disk as possible. I'll determine the capacity required. I have also been asked to backup to tape (in site A) all backups from the last day of the month to the 3rd day of the following month for both sites. They must be retained for a minimum of 2 months.

Site A backups are copied to site B. Site B backups are copied to Site A.

How would I schedule the monthlies? The dailies are easy. The copy jobs are easy. The monthlies have me baffled. Additionally, when I want to run the Monthlies at site A, I cannot see the backup jobs from Site B even though I have used the script to force the repository to rescan daily.

From looking at the tape job, I'm very limited to how it sends to tape. The only way I can think of doing it would be to run the tape job 4 times, yet I can't tell it the specific days to run (by date), only by day.

If you were presented with this request, how would you do it?

I appreciate the help and I look forward to what is suggested.

[Shestakov]

Hello Kevin,

Looks like you have a good understanding of the scheduling. Just some corrections and clarifications.

Best practice we recommend to follow is 3-2-1 rule meaning you need to have at least three copies of your data, store the copies on two different media and keep one backup copy offsite.

In your case keeping backups onsite + backup copying them offsite would be sufficient. However, if your company policy requires additional Tape backups, let`s schedule it as well.

Site A backups are copied to site B. Site B backups are copied to Site A.
How would I schedule the monthlies? The dailies are easy. The copy jobs are easy. The monthlies have me baffled. Additionally, when I want to run the Monthlies at site A, I cannot see the backup jobs from Site B even though I have used the script to force the repository to rescan daily.

If you want to copy to another site restore points only once a month, you can set copy every to start synchronization once a month.
As for rescan, two different servers are unaware of each other, but rescan should help. Are you saying it doesn`t work in your case? Are there any errors or it finishes successfully with no result? Have you tried to perform repository rescan from VBR UI?

I have also been asked to backup to tape (in site A) all backups from the last day of the month to the 3rd day of the following month for both sites. They must be retained for a minimum of 2 months

Could you clarify the first part, please? Do you need all restore points of the month(30incr + 1Full) to be copied to tape during 4 days OR you need to copy backups of those 4 days only?
You can schedule tape job to run after backup copy job, assuming it runs once a month as well or use a simple PS script to run it in a specific day(s).

Thank you.

[kevin@wei.com]

Shestakov, thanks for looking at this. Let me layout my current schedule and we'll see what we can figure from there.

Both sites are configured the same.

1. Dailies are sent to Quantum with a monthly full and daily incrementals stored for 14 days. Each full backup job is staggered on a different day of the month.
2. Backup Copy Job (Currently disabled due to performance issues with our targets) - Runs every 7 days at staggered times and sends 4 weekly backups and 2 monthly backups to a remote site. This is just a guess of what I needed offsite.
3. I have a tape job set to send all backup jobs to tape Monthly on the second Saturday (just set to this temporarily).
4. The remote site will not be backing up to tape locally. The hope is that the local site will take on this task and put everything to tape. This makes it easier for the staff as the remote site is hosted in a colo.

My company specifically has a tape out requirement, so no avoiding that. The last day of the month + the first 3 of the following month go inline with the end of month processing, so those days MUST be sent to tape. I want to prevent having to send 30+ days to tape as that will chew up tapes quickly. If I can get only the required backups to recover from any of those 4 days to tape, that would be perfect.

I have a scheduled a rescan task in windows task manager per another support thread so that I can import the jobs. The problem appears to be that when I create a tape job, those backups are not visible. When I do a restore, they are visible. This prevents me from being able to send them to tape unless I perform a files to tape job (which is fine if needed). The rescan appears to work fine, it is just the inability for the tape job to see the remote jobs when I modify the configuration.

There was mention of using a powershell script to force a tape backup, but I'm trying to keep things within Veeam so that we are not having to manage manual jobs, etc. I guess if this is not possible, then there is not much I can do. Whatever we can do within Veeam would be the best.

Thanks,

Kevin

[Shestakov]

Kevin,

Dailies are sent to Quantum with a monthly full and daily incrementals stored for 14 days. Each full backup job is staggered on a different day of the month.

Note that in this case, using forward incremental method with 1 monthly Full, you will have up to 44 restore points, since the .Vbk file will not be deleted until all its incrementals (.vib) are outdated.

Backup Copy Job (Currently disabled due to performance issues with our targets) - Runs every 7 days at staggered times and sends 4 weekly backups and 2 monthly backups to a remote site. This is just a guess of what I needed offsite

For convenient weekly and monthly backup schedule, I would recommend to go for GFS Retention Policy. Please check the hyperlink.

There was mention of using a powershell script to force a tape backup, but I'm trying to keep things within Veeam so that we are not having to manage manual jobs, etc. I guess if this is not possible, then there is not much I can do. Whatever we can do within Veeam would be the best.

I fully understand and agree, but some users` demands are rare, like to do tape backups just for 4 days in a row in a month and sometimes it`s really easier and more efficient to use a simple PS script instead of making 4 tape jobs for these days. Will see, maybe someone else in this forum can suggest more elegant way.

Thank you.

[foggy]

I have a scheduled a rescan task in windows task manager per another support thread so that I can import the jobs. The problem appears to be that when I create a tape job, those backups are not visible. When I do a restore, they are visible. This prevents me from being able to send them to tape unless I perform a files to tape job (which is fine if needed). The rescan appears to work fine, it is just the inability for the tape job to see the remote jobs when I modify the configuration.

To be able to use imported backups created by another Veeam B&R instance as source, you need to create a dummy backup job and map it to the imported chain. Then this dummy job should be specified as the source for the tape job.