VEEAM - Reverse Incremental Question

[CHiLL]

Our backups are currently configured in VEEAM using incremental. I'd like to change these to Reverse incremental...what would happen if I made this change to one of our jobs? Would it inject the next backup into the full, or would it inject all previously created incrementals and then inject the next one?

 

I'd prefer not to take the 'lets try and find out' route on our live backups!

[ijk]

It looks like (https://forums.veeam.com/veeam-backup-replication-f2/can-i-switch-from-incremental-to-reversed-incremental-t5532-15.html) the first run, after switching from forward to reverse incremental, will create a full backup.

[CHiLL]

It looks like (https://forums.veeam.com/veeam-backup-replication-f2/can-i-switch-from-incremental-to-reversed-incremental-t5532-15.html) the first run, after switching from forward to reverse incremental, will create a full backup.

 

Thanks for that.

 

What is the recommended practice for backup strategies? At the moment, we just do incremental with a 30 day retention policy. I'd like to convert this to reverse incremental so transferring the data to our hard drive backups is easier. Is this method recommended? Or is normal incremental better? Or should I use 'Create full synthetic full backups periodically'? What about 'Transform previous backup chains into rollbacks'?

 

I'm just after some advice really.

Edited March 8, 2016 by CHiLL

[ijk]

I don't know about recommended. Much of what you do will be guided by the disk space you have available for backups. This is what we do:

 

We have 3 Backup jobs.

 

1. Scheduled Backup

Daily, reverse incremental, additional active full backup 1st Friday of each month, 30 restore points kept on disk

2. Monthly Full Backup

Monthly, 1st Saturday each month, incremental, active full backup 1st Saturday of each month (not sure if that's a requirement because...), 1 restore point kept on disk

3. Weekly Encrypted Full Backup

Weekly, every Wednesday, incremental, active full backup weekly every Wednesday (not sure if that's a requirement because...), 1 restore point kept on disk

 

We have 2 Tape jobs

4. Monthly Archive to Tape

This is a secondary target for the monthly job above. Tapes stored and retained for 1 year.

5. Weekly Full to Tape

This is a secondary target for the weekly encrypted job above. Tapes stored offsite and retained for about a month.

 

1 is our convenience backup, speedy recovery from disk

2/4 are the longer term recovery/archiving backups

3/5 are the disaster recovery backups

 

Hope that helps.

[CHiLL]

I don't know about recommended. Much of what you do will be guided by the disk space you have available for backups. This is what we do:

 

We have 3 Backup jobs.

 

1. Scheduled Backup

Daily, reverse incremental, additional active full backup 1st Friday of each month, 30 restore points kept on disk

2. Monthly Full Backup

Monthly, 1st Saturday each month, incremental, active full backup 1st Saturday of each month (not sure if that's a requirement because...), 1 restore point kept on disk

3. Weekly Encrypted Full Backup

Weekly, every Wednesday, incremental, active full backup weekly every Wednesday (not sure if that's a requirement because...), 1 restore point kept on disk

 

We have 2 Tape jobs

4. Monthly Archive to Tape

This is a secondary target for the monthly job above. Tapes stored and retained for 1 year.

5. Weekly Full to Tape

This is a secondary target for the weekly encrypted job above. Tapes stored offsite and retained for about a month.

 

1 is our convenience backup, speedy recovery from disk

2/4 are the longer term recovery/archiving backups

3/5 are the disaster recovery backups

 

Hope that helps.

Cheers.

 

My plan is:

VEEAM backups VM to our SAN.

I'd like to then copy the VM backups to external HDDs, which can then be stored in a fire safe.

 

So I'm after the best way to manage backups for this scenario.

[PotNoodleTech]

Reverse incremental is the way to go as you only ever need to take a copy of the latest backup and it'll be the full one.

[Steve21]

Cheers.

 

My plan is:

VEEAM backups VM to our SAN.

I'd like to then copy the VM backups to external HDDs, which can then be stored in a fire safe.

 

So I'm after the best way to manage backups for this scenario.

 

Reverse + Encrypted BackUp Copy

 

Does all you need without the manual faff

 

Steve

[CHiLL]

Reverse + Encrypted BackUp Copy

 

Does all you need without the manual faff

 

Steve

Thanks!

If I wanted say, three sets of disk backups (one in action, two other sets in two different fire safes)...would it be best to use one smaller NAS chassis and swap out three disk sets on a rotation basis, or use three different NAS chassis and rotate them around? The former sounds good, but if we use a RAID setup and swap disks around...will different RAID sets in one chassis cause issues?

[Steve21]

Thanks!

If I wanted say, three sets of disk backups (one in action, two other sets in two different fire safes)...would it be best to use one smaller NAS chassis and swap out three disk sets on a rotation basis, or use three different NAS chassis and rotate them around? The former sounds good, but if we use a RAID setup and swap disks around...will different RAID sets in one chassis cause issues?

 

If you're talking RAID'd drives you'll have issues with the RAID config keep changing, but we just use large HDs for them (6TB each).

 

If you want a chassis/RAID you could do it that way though

 

Steve

[CHiLL]

If you're talking RAID'd drives you'll have issues with the RAID config keep changing, but we just use large HDs for them (6TB each).

 

If you want a chassis/RAID you could do it that way though

 

Steve

I'm just thinking that if we back up to 1 HDD, it may fail...so duplicating the data may be a solution?

[Steve21]

I'm just thinking that if we back up to 1 HDD, it may fail...so duplicating the data may be a solution?

 

We have 4 on rotation, so even if 1 HDD did fail oldest data we had would be 1 week out. But could always do 2+ Copies per week if you wanted

 

Steve