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Backup Replication Limitations on Mini Plans

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I am hoping someone can assist me with a backup replication challenge I have in ABR12.5.

I was looking forward to using the replication mini plans as I have many cases where I need to seperate replication tasks from the backup plan. When I tested this though, I found that replication in the mini plans works differently to replication in the backup plans.

Let me explain:

In the mini plan, you have 3 options for how to replicate:

- All Backups

- Only Full Backups

- Only Last Backup

As an example, I have a number of very large archives which I cannot run a cleanup job as part of the backup plan as it takes 3-4 days to run. I therefore have to perform cleanups manually using a workaround to ensure backups are not missed.

I replicated a very large archive with over 200 backups and 10TB of data to another location. This archive has 1 full backup and all others are incremental. I then proceeded to run a backup plan to the replicated archive with a cleanup task with consolidation which deleted unwanted old backups. I then waited till a compact was run on the location so that I could reclaim around 15TB of disk space. The whole process took around 2-3 weeks.

What I now needed to do was replicate the last 2-3 weeks of incremental backups, redirect backups to the new location and repeat the process on the original location.

None of the options in the replication mini plan worked. 

The All Backups option started replicating old backups from the original location which i had deleted in the new location. 

The Only Full Backup option is not a valid option for what I needed to do.

The Only Last Backup option replicated just one backup which was a consolidation of all the missing backups for the past 2-3 weeks. Not what I wanted.

I then configured a backup plan with replication. The replication task completed and the results were what I was looking for, all individual backups for the past 2-3 weeks were replicated to the new location.

Are there options that I am not aware of that would achieve what I need?

Is the difference in replication behaviour between the mini plans and the backup plans by design? What is the logic behind this difference?

It is not ideal to use a backup plan in order to catchup with replication as you cannot run the replication task only, you need to run a backup and then delete it.

Any feedback or guidance would be greatly appreciated.

cheers 

Margaret 

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Hello Margaret!

If I understand you correctly you want to replicate the last 2-3 weeks of backups to another location for (example) this large archive(1 full + 200 incremental).
Do you need to produce this 2-3 weeks of backups as a one-off operation, or is it adequate to just have them this way eventually? My thinking is you could configure to replicate the last backup only with about the same scheduling as your backups, and set the retention rule on the replication for this 2-3 week period. Over time you would build up a copy of the archives for the last 2-3 weeks and only those.

What I now needed to do was replicate the last 2-3 weeks of incremental backups, redirect backups to the new location and repeat the process on the original location.

What process are you repeating? Do you mean: replicate last 2-3 weeks to "locationB" and set backup to "locationB" then do this for each other archive?

Can you tell me more about what's your use case for replication? Specifically why are you redirecting your backups to the location where you replicated backups to?

-- Peter

Hi Peter

We have a requirement to retain 2 copies of all backups with a retention of 3-6 months.

I cannot use retention rules on some of our large backups as the cleanup task takes a number of days to complete.

My workaround is:

- stop replication

- Cleanup old backups from LocationB

- replicate recent missing backups to LocationB

- re-direct backup to LocationB

- cleanup old backups from LocationA

- replicate recent missing backups to LocationA

- re-direct backup to LocationA

I need to replicate all of the last 2-3 backups to locationB. I need to have the individual backups, not just last backup.

My issue, as I have detailed in my original post, is with the behaviour in the in the replication mini plan. I have tested it and it does not behave in the same way as replication in a backup plan.

Kind Regards

Margaret

 

Hello Margaret!

To rephrase your process:
Both locations are full. You delete old backups by hand on LocationB to free up space, pull backups from LocationA that couldn't be stored on LocationB, redirect backups to LocationB so backups can continue to work while you do the same process to LocationA, then reverse the process and make space on LocationA.
Is this right?

I take it that cleanup taking long is a problem because of your other post on the forums about limited storage space?
Is there any reason that you have a single full backup with hundreds of incrementals on it? I can imagine this many incrementals are the primary reason for degraded performance overall. (especially with consolidation). Shorter backup chains might be also easier to manage.

Another thing, have you tried working with v12 archive format instead?

-- Peter
 

Hi Peter

Regarding the process I follow, you are getting close.

The reason I need to do this is because this particular server which I am backing up has 12TB of data with daily changes of anything up to 200GB and I need to retain at the minimum 90 days of daily backups.

This is the reason reason a daily cleanup is not possible.

Using v12 archive format is not suitable for our scenario as we are replicating backups to a secondary location.

Please understand that I have accepted the fact that this is the process and I have only provided this information to demonstrate use case.

But all of the above is in fact irrelevant. 

My actual question is related to the replication functionality difference between the mini plan and the backup plan.

Are you able to provide some feedback regarding this?

Thank you

Margaret

 

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Hello Margaret,

thanks for posting this question on Acronis forums!

I have a number of very large archives which I cannot run a cleanup job as part of the backup plan as it takes 3-4 days to run

This happens because of too much incrementals that depend on 1 full, as you mentioned:

I replicated a very large archive with over 200 backups and 10TB of data to another location. This archive has 1 full backup and all others are incremental.

Since retention rules can't properly work (you mentioned that you have to perform cleanups manually), this may lead to incorrect replication plans work. Could you please describe your cleanup mechanism?

The All Backups option started replicating old backups from the original location which i had deleted in the new location. 

However, I need to consult with experts on default logic in replication plans workflow.

Thank you.

Hi Maria

As described in my previous posts, the cleanup mechanism I use is to run a seperate backup plan to the backup on locationB which is configured with retention rules and cleanup is configured with the consolidate option on. 

the result though is that I end up with a backup appended to this location which I do not want and need to delete. I also then need to replicate all the recent missing backups to locationB. eg. if the cleanup task takes 5 days to complete, then I need to replicate the last 5 days of incremental backups. 

My testing has shown that this can only be done by using the replication option within a backup plan as the logic in the replication mini plans is different. I have tried to describe the difference in my previous posts.

Let me know if this helps clarify.

Margaret

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Hello Margaret.

I recommend that you open a case with Acronis Support Team since this situation requires reproducing for investigation.