10 Veeam Retention Policy Best Practices
Veeam is a great tool for backing up data, but there are some best practices to follow to get the most out of it.
Data protection is a critical part of any organization’s business continuity and disaster recovery strategy. Veeam provides a number of features and options to help organizations protect their data, including retention policies.
Retention policies define how long backups are retained and can be used to meet compliance requirements or simply to ensure that backups are available for a certain period of time. In this article, we will discuss 10 best practices for using Veeam retention policies.
1. Use GFS media pools
GFS media pools allow you to keep weekly, monthly, and yearly backups on separate disks or tape drives. This way, you can quickly locate the backup you need without having to search through all of your backups.
Not only does this make it easier to find the right backup, but it also helps you save time and money. By using GFS media pools, you can avoid having to buy new disks or tape drives every time you need to add a new backup.
If you’re not using GFS media pools, you should start today. They’re an essential part of any Veeam retention policy and will help you save time and money in the long run.
2. Create a retention policy for each job
When you create a new backup job, Veeam automatically applies the global retention policy to that job. However, the global retention policy might not be appropriate for every job. For example, you might want to keep daily backups for two weeks and weekly backups for one month, but the global retention policy only allows you to keep daily backups for one week and weekly backups for two weeks.
If you don’t create a separate retention policy for each job, you’ll have to manually adjust the global retention policy every time you create a new backup job. This is time-consuming and error-prone.
Creating a retention policy for each job is the best way to ensure that your backups are retained for the correct amount of time.
3. Keep the number of restore points low
The lower the number of restore points, the less disk space is used. This is because each new restore point contains all of the data from the previous restore points. So, if you have four restore points, the fourth one will contain all of the data from the first three.
This might not seem like a big deal, but it can actually be a huge problem. If you need to restore your system from a backup, and the backup only contains the data from the most recent restore point, you could lose a lot of data.
For this reason, it’s important to keep the number of restore points low. That way, if you do need to restore your system, you won’t lose as much data.
4. Avoid using synthetic full backups
While synthetic full backups can save time and storage space, they come with a few risks. For one, if you have to restore from a synthetic full backup, you’ll have to do a full restore, which can take a long time. Additionally, if there are any errors in the synthetic full backup, you may not be able to restore at all.
It’s generally best to stick with incremental backups, which will take up more storage space but will be much easier to restore from.
5. Do not use forever forward incremental backup chains
If you use a forever forward incremental backup chain, your backups will eventually become very large and unwieldy. Additionally, if you need to restore from one of these backups, the process will take a long time.
It’s much better to use a synthetic full backup as your starting point, and then create incremental backups from that. This way, your backups will be smaller and more manageable, and restoring from them will be much faster.
6. Disable active full backups
Active full backups are a type of backup that is taken while the VM is running. This can cause performance issues for the VM, as well as increase the amount of time it takes to perform the backup.
Instead, you should configure your Veeam retention policy to take active full backups only when necessary. For example, you might want to take an active full backup once a week, or once a month.
You can also use Veeam’s built-in scheduling feature to automate the process of taking active full backups. This way, you can ensure that your backups are taken at a time that won’t impact the performance of your VMs.
7. Enable application-aware processing
When you take a backup of a VM, Veeam will create a snapshot of the VM. This is fine for most purposes, but if you need to restore an individual file or application from the VM, the snapshot may not contain all of the data you need.
Enabling application-aware processing ensures that Veeam will quiesce the applications in the VM before taking the snapshot. This means that all of the data needed for a particular application will be included in the snapshot, and you’ll be able to restore that application more easily.
8. Consider disabling VSS snapshots on source side
If you leave VSS snapshots enabled on the source side, every time a backup job runs, it will create a new snapshot. This can quickly lead to a large number of snapshots, which can impact performance and stability.
It’s much better to disable VSS snapshots on the source side, and only enable them on the target side. That way, you’ll have fewer snapshots, and you can control when they’re created and deleted.
9. Configure your jobs to run in parallel
If you have a lot of VMs to backup, and you’re not running your jobs in parallel, then each job will take longer to complete. This can cause problems if you’re trying to meet a tight backup window.
By running your jobs in parallel, you can reduce the overall time it takes to complete your backups. This is because each job will be using its own resources, so the jobs won’t be competing for the same resources.
You can configure your jobs to run in parallel by going to the Job Settings page and selecting the “Enable Parallel Processing” option.
10. Use backup copy jobs to create offsite copies
If you only have on-prem backups, and something happens to your datacenter (e.g., a fire), then you’re out of luck. But if you have offsite backups as well, then you can still recover your data.
Creating offsite backups is easy with Veeam. You just need to create a backup copy job, and specify an offsite location (e.g., a cloud provider). Veeam will take care of the rest.
There are many other Veeam retention policy best practices, but this is one of the most important ones.