Separate folders for differentials and incremental

[bradgillap]

Hello,

I use backupexec 20.1 with a qnap nas over SMB currently. This works fine using a combination of full/differential but the differentials are too big for me to sync with my offiste backup over a business cable connection after a week or two.

What I would like to do is continue doing a differential to my local backup nas and then have a seperate set of incrementals to sync with the offsite backup as these can sync daily. Every few months I'll grab the nas at the other site to start a fresh full backup. I have about 3TB of full backups. The differentials don't grow out of control too fast. 

The problem is that I use rsync to synchronize the local and offsite nas's. So I need some way to have two seperate folders so that one can hold differentials and the other can hold incrementals but use the same full backup. That way I don't have to sync the differentials every single day with the offsite.

I'm open to any suggestions. Veritas doesn't recommend you add the same storage drive twice because jobs will run into each other and cause thrashing. I don't think I can afford netbackup or another solution. We came from storagecraft which split backups but didn't change archive files where there was no change. Veritas seems to replace files at every backup causing my rsync to try and sync everything at once. We aren't big enough for some of the nicer block level hardware available. 

I don't mind picking up the device from the offsite to bring it to the onsite and doing a big sync every 2 or 3 months but I can't do it every week. Maybe there is a better solution that I haven't stumbled on with this software yet? Thanks.

[Colin_Weaver]

If I understand you correctly you backup to QNAS and then rsync from the QNAS to somewhere else. If I am correct please be aware that the copying/moving of disk storage data outside of duplicate jobs within Backup Exec is NOT a good practice due to the relationships between Media Content, Inventory, DLM records and the Catalogs.  Info here https://www.veritas.com/support/en_US/article.000114126

Also mixing differential and incremental backups can over complicate your restores (especially if you are manually manipulating the disk storage files) and although we allow you to do it, the best practice is don't mix differentials and incrementals against the same resources. The reason why this gets complicated is that the differentials can end up being chained to the last incremental to run and not the last full when you mix them.

I know both those points don't help your question but we would be remiss not to point out that your current solution could cause problems in the future.

[bradgillap]

Thank you for responding.

What are some other options I can bring back to management for moving data off site?

We liked the rsync method because we don't have to run an SMB share with the offsite qnap and it can pull the data on a schedule. This method offers a bit of extra security against a cryptolocker attack. Doing it the veritas way would have me creating an smb share to that qnap accessible over our ipsec tunnel. Not ideal.

[Colin_Weaver]

Oddly enough you are not the first to attempt to copy Backup Exec disk data without using CIFS in order to protect against Ransomware (and I believe we are thinking of something to solve this sort of issue in the longer term however I can't put a timescale or guarantee on this)

However there are some things you can do now:

You can use two Backup Exec Servers in a CASO setup (one server on each site) with Optimized duplication (requires deduplication storage on both servers). This does not use CIFS (although both servers will individually be able to access the NTFS volumes so this only protects if the ransomware only gets on one of the servers)

Another option is to look at Open Deduplication, OST or Cloud devices that can be configured using plugins (so not CIFS) to run duplicate jobs from local storage devices to remote ones

Of course old school also works - tapes are not affected by ransomware (unless what is written to the tape is already encrypted by the ransomware)

Finally we do have some info on dealing with ransomeware available (although it might not cover protecting Backup Exec itself from ransomware)

https://www.veritas.com/product/backup-and-recovery/backup-exec/ransomware

[bradgillap]

CASO setup at the other site is not going to be something fast I can setup but for now but I think what we'll do is add the offsite qnap as a second storage provider. Run the incremental jobs over tunnel and then sever the links for times of day when backups are not running to avoid smb availability. I'll do full backups locally and then incrementals over wan. This is still not ideal but might give me a fighting chance and then I can have more control over what gets backed up offsite. 

I've been looking at amazon glacier for storing copies of our data monthly. I can withstand to wait a few days for drives to ship to us if it hits the fan to save money on availability backup. Can I ask your personal recommendation for third party cloud providers since you're so involved? 

Also, thank you very much for your insight. 

[Colin_Weaver]

We have some videos as pinned posts in this forum that discuss some options for cloud connectors as well as an Open Deduplication setups.

Unfortunately I don't have enough personal knowledge to recommend any specific configurations.