Configuring jobs in VBR
Configure a local job
To configure a job in the customer’s VBR, go to the Home section and choose Backup Job. Here you can choose the type of backup you’d like to create. In our example, we’ll backup a Virtual Machine.
Name
Give the job a name, it can be anything, but it’s practical to choose something meaningful e.g. the name of the VM you’ll backup.
Virtual Machines
To choose the machine(s) you want to backup, click on Add and browse the servers that are available on your hypervisor. Select the server(s) you need, click on Add again, then on Next to go on with the wizard.
Storage
Choose the local repository that you have previously created.
The default repository after a Veeam install is on the computer's C:\ drive, but it is not supported to do backups there. You need to create repositories on system-independent storages e.g. on a NAS or on a separate disk. To see how, click here.
Advanced menu
If you click the Advanced button, you can choose special settings, e.g. if you want to create incremental or reverse incremental backups, or how often you want to create an active full backup. More about this can be read in the Veeam knowledgebase. https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backup/vsphere/backup_methods.html?ver=100
Our recommendation is that if you specify less than 15 restore points, create synthetic full backups periodically to shorten the restore times (in case you need one). If you need to specify more than 15 restore points, there's a chance full backups will fill up your repository, so it's more advisable to go with the forever forward incremental method. (More about the different job types here.)
On the Maintenance tab tick in Perform backup files health check - this will help in preventing the backup files to be corrupted.
On the Storage tab, you can choose the compression level. The higher the compression level, the greater load is on the source computers CPUs BUT the backup sizes become smaller. Choose the one appropriate to your scenario.
Under storage optimization choose the appropriate settings depending on the destination of your backups. In this scenario, we are backing up to a local storage, so Local target is what we need to choose. Review the table here to get more information.
Enable encryption if it is required by the customer. (Strongly recommended!)
Caution: store the password securely because it will be needed in case of a restore. If you lose it, we cannot recover it.
Click Apply when all the required configurations are done.
GFS backups
Info: GFS backups allow you to store periodic full backups of one given backup chain for a longer time than that of the default retention of the job. E.g. your retention is 7 days, but you enable GFS backup to store full backups for 3 weeks, your chain will contain 3 full backups (created weekly) and 6 incremental backups (created daily).
In case you need GFS backup, go back to the Retention policy section of the wizard: tick in Keep some periodic full backups longer for archival purposes.
These backups are created weekly / monthly / yearly.
Click configure, and choose the settings that the customer needs.
Caution: GFS backups work ONLY with full backups. Because of this, you need to have periodic full backups scheduled in your backup job. (The forever forward incremental method cannot be used!) E.g. under the Advanced tab, choose to have periodic synthetic full backups or active backups scheduled.
Guest Processing
On the Guest Processing tab, you can specify if you need Veeam to manage the applications and data inside the virtual machine, e.g. index the file system or truncate SQL logs. More on this here: https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backup/vsphere/guest_processing.html?ver=100
For a server running a database, you can truncate logs by enabling application-aware processing.
Caution: use this option ONLY if you are very sure of what you are doing. Using both Veeam SQL backup and native SQL backups will render both of those backups useless! More on SQL backups here. Let us know if you need help in this, we are happy to assist.
File system indexing is useful if you'd like to use the search feature on your possible future restores, but it's not required to use the file-level restore feature.
Schedule
On the next tab, you can choose a schedule for automatic processing, if you want your backup to run periodically automatically.
Backup window
A backup window is useful if you want Veeam to run only in a predefined time range e.g. only at night.
If you need to use a backup window, tick in Terminate the job if it exceeds allowed backup window
Click on Window...
Mark the times when you don't want the job to run > if the small squares are grayed out, it means the job won't run during those times.
Click OK
Click Next.
Summary
On the Summary tab, review your configuration and click Finish to finalize the backup job settings. Optionally, you may tick in the “Run this job when I click Finish”, and the job will start right away.
Backup job to the cloud vs. backup copy job to the cloud
A backup job to the cloud is a simple backup job that will take a snapshot of your VM and back it up into the cloud connect server of the SP. A backup copy job on the other hand, is a job where Veeam collects the backup data from an already existing local backup file of the VM and transfer the collected data into the VCC server of the SP.
You will find both methods here, but it is recommended to use the backup copy job method.
Create a backup job to the cloud (to the VCC server)
For this step to work, you need to have an already configured connection to your SP. Check the “Service Provider Configuration in Veeam Backup and Replication Console” chapter for details.
To set up a new backup job that will save the VMs into the cloud, just do everything the way you’d normally do to set up a job (Configure a local backup job in VBR), but on the Storage tab of the Backup Job wizard, specify a Cloud repository existing in the SP’s VCC server (off-site). This is the same repository that you chose when you sat up the company of the customer in the SP Console.
Caution: The reverse incremental backup method is not recommended for backup jobs targeted at the cloud repository. The process of a full backup file rebuild requires higher I/O load. This may impact the backup job performance, especially in case of low bandwidth or high latency network connection between the tenant side and SP side.
Create a backup copy job
On the local VBR install, in the Home menu (on the Home tab), choose Backup Copy.
Job
Give the job a name, and choose the mode.
- Immediate to copy all local restore points to the cloud,
- Periodic copy if you want to copy only the last restore point.
Object
As an object, choose the already existing backup job to start from.
Choose the Customer’s repository that’s in the cloud.
Advanced
It is not recommended to activate Storage-level corruption guard for the cloud job, because it normally takes a longer time than the usual RTO (1 day), and will make the job fail.
On the Storage tab, you can choose the compression level. The higher the compression level, the greater load is on the source computers CPUs BUT the backup sizes become smaller. Choose the one appropriate to your scenario - or if you're unsure, leave it on Auto to let Veeam decide.
Enable encryption if it is required by the customer. (Strongly recommended!)
Caution: store the password securely because it will be needed in case of a restore. If you lose it, we cannot recover it.
Click Apply when all the required configurations are done.
In case you need GFS retention in the cloud, you may enable it here. (See previous section on GFS for more information.)
Data Transfer
If your network speed (upstream) is below 100 Mbit/sec, and your license allows it, enable WAN acceleration. WAN acceleration is available with the Enterprise and Enterprise plus license. Otherwise the option is grayed out. To utilize WAN acceleration please, check this documentation: https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backup/hyperv/wan_add.html?ver=110
Enterprise license:
Standard license:
Schedule
On the Schedule tab, you can choose Continuously so that the job is waiting for any changes in the “mother” backup job or choose your custom time periods.
Click Apply > Finish
After finishing the wizard, if you go to Backup Copy Jobs menu, you’ll see that the job is running, but is in a Pending state, saying that the status is Idle. This is because it’s waiting for changes that appear on the backup job, that’s related to it. If a new backup is detected, it will wait until the backup job finishes, and then starts a copy into the cloud.
In case you chose the VM as the object of your backup copy...
If you chose the already existing Job as the backup object, then the local and the cloud job will already be connected. If you chose the VM as the object, now you need to connect the two jobs.
To assign a backup job to the backup copy job, create the backup job, or if it exists, open it and on the storage tab, choose Configure secondary backup destinations. (Note on the screenshot that the target of the backup job itself stays locally, only the secondary location will be in the cloud.)
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