Specify Advanced Backup Settings

Click Advanced to specify advanced options for the backup job.

Backup settings

Select the method you want to use to back up VMs – Reversed incremental or Incremental. To learn about these backup methods, see the Backup Methods section.

If you choose the Incremental method, you must select to periodically create a synthetic full backup or perform active full backups. To learn more about these types of backups, see the Active and Synthetic Full Backup sections.

• To create a synthetic full backup, select the Enable synthetic fulls (forever-incremental) check box and click Days to schedule synthetic fulls on the necessary days. The created synthetic full backup will be used as a starting point for subsequent increments.

You can additionally choose to transform the previous full backup chain into the reversed incremental backup chain. To do so, select the Transform previous full backup chains into rollbacks check box. Veeam Backup & Replication will transform the previous backup chain (full backup and increments) into .vrb files and delete the previous full backup file.

As a result, instead of the incremental backup chain you will have a reversed incremental chain that will consist of the synthetic full backup and a set of transformed .vrb files.

• To perform full backups regularly, select the Perform active full backups periodically check box and define scheduling settings. The created full backup will be used as a starting point for subsequent increments.

Note If you schedule the active full backup and the transformation task on the same day, Veeam Backup

& Replication will perform only active full backup and skip the transformation task.

When scheduling periodic full backups, you need to make sure you have enough free space on the backup repository. As an alternative, you can perform active full backup manually. To do so, right-click the ready backup job in the list and select Perform Full Backup.

Storage settings

On the Storage tab, specify deduplication, compression and optimization settings for backup files that the job will provision.

By default, Veeam Backup & Replication performs deduplication before storing retrieved VM data to a backup repository. Deduplication provides a smaller size of a resulting backup file but may reduce backup performance. You can disable deduplication at all by clearing the Enable inline data deduplication check box.

You can disable deduplication at all by clearing the Enable inline data deduplication check box.

By disabling this option, you also change the mechanism of incremental backup. If Changed Block Tracking is enabed for the job, Veeam Backup & Replication will save all data block CBT has marked as new to the destination storage, without performing additional check or using Veeam’s filtering mechanism. This will result in faster incremental backup. To learn more, see the Changed Block Tracking section.

In the Compression section, specify a compression level for the created backup: None, Dedupe-friendly, Optimal or Extreme. To learn more, see the Compression and Deduplication section.

In the Storage section, select the type of backup target you are planning to use. Depending on the chosen option, Veeam Backup & Replication will use data blocks of different size to optimize the size of backups and job performance:

• Local target (16 TB + backup size). This option is recommended for backup jobs that can produce very large full backup files — larger than 16 TB. It provides the lowest

deduplication ratio and produces the largest incremental backup file.

• Local target. This option is recommended if you are planning to use SAN, DAS or local storage as a target. The SAN identifies larger blocks of data and therefore can process larger quantities of data at a time. This option provides the fastest backup job

performance but reduces the deduplication ratio — the larger is a data block, the lower is the chance to find an identical block.

• LAN target. This option is recommended for NAS and on-site replication. It provides a better deduplication ratio and reduces the size of an incremental backup file.

• WAN target. This option is recommended if you are planning to use WAN for off-site backup. Veeam Backup & Replication uses small data blocks, which involves significant processing overhead but results in the maximum deduplication ratio and the smallest size of increment files.

Notifications settings

Use the Notifications tab if you want to be notified when the backup is completed.

• Select the Send email notifications to the following recipients check box if you want to receive notifications by e–mail in case of job failure or success. In the field below, specify a recipient’s email address. You can enter several addresses separated by a semicolon.

Email notifications will be sent only if you have selected the Enable email notification check box in the Options window and specified email notification settings (select Tools >

Options from the main menu). To learn more, see the Specifying Email Notification Settings section.

• Select the Enable SNMP notification for this job check box if you want to receive SNMP traps when a job is completed and a backup is created. SNMP traps will be sent if you configure SNMP settings in Veeam Backup & Replication and on the recipient’s computer.

To learn more, see the Specifying SNMP Settings section.

Hyper-V settings

Use the Hyper-V tab to select the necessary Hyper-V backup method and enable changed block tracking for VMs in the job.

In the Guest quiescence section, specify which backup method should be used to prepare the VM guest OS for backup. Typically, it is recommended to use Veeam's application-aware image

processing which leverages the Microsoft VSS framework for quiescing the applications running on the VM.

If application-aware image processing cannot be used for some reason, for example, in case of a Linux VM, select the Enable Hyper-V guest quescence check box. Veeam Backup & Replication will select the backup method in the following way:

• If a VM meets all requirements for online backup, Veeam Backup & Replication will use the online backup method.

• If a VM does not meet requirements for online backup, Veeam Backup & Replication will use the offline backup method. Note that during offline backup a VM is suspended for a short period of time.

If you do not want to suspend a VM, select the Take crash consistent backup instead of

suspending VM check box. In this case, Veeam Backup & Replication will perform crash-consistent backup of a VM.

Note The selected backup method applies to all VMs in the job. However, if at the next step of the wizard you select to use application-aware image processing for all VMs in the job or for a specific VM, the application-aware image processing settings will have higher priority than the selected options.

In the Changed block tracking section, specify if changed block tracking should be enabled. By default, this option is selected. Changed block tracking dramatically reduces resources and time required to perform incremental backups. To learn more, see the Changed Block Tracking section.

Advanced settings

On the Advanced tab, specify miscellaneous advanced settings for the job.

• Select the Enable automatic backup integrity checks check box if you want

Veeam Backup & Replication to periodically check a full backup file. An automatic backup check allows you to verify integrity of a backup file and avoid a situation when a full backup is corrupted, making all further increments corrupted, too.

A backup check is performed every time the job is started, and a full backup file is re-built to include new incremental changes. If the check determines a full backup file to be corrupted (for example, some parts of the backup storage are unreadable), a notification message will be displayed, prompting you to perform full backup anew. During such full backup, no integrity check will be performed.

• In the File selective image processing section, define whether you want to exclude blocks of Windows pagefiles from the backup. During backup, Veeam Backup &

Replication checks the NTFS MFT file on Windows-based VMs to identify blocks of the Windows pagefile, and excludes these blocks from processing. Windows pagefiles are dynamic in their nature and change intensively between backup job runs, even if VMs do not change much. Therefore, pagefile processing results in reduced backup performance and increased size of backup increments.

Clear the Exclude swap file blocks from processing check box if Windows pagefiles should be processed during backup.

• In the Synthetic full section, specify the number of days to keep backup data for deleted VMs. When a backup job starts, Veeam Backup & Replication checks the list of VMs included into the job. If a VM is no longer available (for example, it was deleted or moved to another location), Veeam Backup & Replication will keep its data in the backup for the period you specify in the Deleted VMs data retention period field. When this retention period is over, data of the deleted VM will be removed from backup files.

The retention period for deleted VMs is particularly useful if the job is configured to create synthetic full backups and you want to make sure that the full backup does not include redundant data.

• Select the Run the following command check box if you want to execute post-backup actions, for example, to launch a script recording the resulting backup file to tape. Use the Browse button to select an executable file.

You can select to execute post-backup actions after a number of backup cycles or on specific week days. If you select the Run every... backup cycle option, specify the number of a backup cycle after which the file should be executed. If you select the Run on

selected days only option, click Days and specify week days when actions should be performed.