Two ways to back up Veeam

Two ways to back up Veeam

Veeam creates two backup files, VBK is a full backup, and Vrb/vib is an incremental backup file used to record changes.

Reversed Incremental Backup

Each incremental backup updates the VBK file, and VBK is the latest full backup, restoring the latest backup as long as the VBK is restored. The modified content in VBK is saved to VRB in each incremental backup, so it is called REVERSED,VRB not the modified new data, but the old data that is overwritten, and the restoration of the previous backup requires merging VRB and VBK. This method is always an incremental backup, saving hard disk space, which is the recommended solution for backup on disk.

RetentionPolicy: Retention policies immediately delete extended Delta VRB files directly

Forward Incremental Backup

Each incremental backup saves only the changed parts into a new Vib file, which is the best option if you need to store the backup data to tape or remote, whenever a new Vib file is saved, or if there is a regulatory requirement that the backup should not be modified.

It is obvious that the Vib file will become more and more, which will result in the need to merge too many vib files when recovering, so you must use active full or synthetic full backups to solve the long chain problem.

Active Full Backup

Create a full backup from the source, and later forward incremental backup will create an incremental backup file from this new full backup.

Synthetic Full Backup

Using active full backup is a process that consumes system resources very much, and synthetic full backup combines a new complete backup with the previous VBK and incremental backup VIB. Because there is no need to read the source, the pressure on the system is much smaller. Obviously later forward incremental backup will create an incremental backup file from this new full backup.

Retention Policy (Forward incremental backup)

The entire delta backup chain list is deleted only if the last incremental backup of an incremental backup list is overdue.

Transforming Incremental backup Chains into reversed Incremental backup Chains

If synthetic full backups is selected when using incremental backup, you can choose this option. The system will only keep a full backup, the backup before this full backup will be converted to reversed incremental backup method, only the overwritten data is saved to VRB, after the full backup data is normal incremental backup mode.

Two ways to back up Veeam