Hello everyone!
This is my first contribution to the Veeam Community Hub!
In the long term, I plan to start my own blog to share my thoughts and technical perspectives from my daily work, but while it is in the making, let's move on with my thoughts on the topic „how to structure jobs.“
This post will cover Veeam Backup & Replication in the first place, but in the future I will also cover Veeam Microsoft 365.
In my daily work, I have seen a lot of variations, like “naming schemes“ (please imagine this in very large quotation marks), like "Backup Job 1“ or „Server Backup x with Database.“
Basically naming jobs like this, of course, works, but in the daily work you have to search for what this job is exactly, and when the description is the default one, you don't know anything.
To prevent this situation, and because I really like to organize things:)
Over time, I have developed a specific naming scheme for jobs in Veeam Backup and Replication, such as Backup to Disk or Backup Copy Jobs.
This scheme is based on the post of
and the official Veeam VMCE (VMCE 2025/v12) training material.
But let's get specific; here is one example name and description for a VMware vSphere Backup to Disk Job for application VMs like Active Directory Domain Controller or Microsoft Exchange with a retention of one week:
| Name | Description |
| B2D-FRA-VMV-APP-7D | Backup to Disk, Frankfurt, VMware vSphere, Application servers, 7 days retention |
For the individual parts of the job name, here is the explanation:
B2D means simple, that is, a backup to disk, but this can also be a backup to Cloud or Tape.
So this is where I mention above in this article from
Here is a short overview of the abbreviation:
| Abbreviations | Description |
| B2D | Backup to Disk |
| B2T | Backup to Tape |
| B2C | Backup to Cloud |
| BC | Backup Copy |
| LTR | Long Terminal Retention |
| VMR | VM Replication |
| CDP | Continuous Data Protection |
FRA is the airport code for the Frankfurt Airport, also called Fraport.
So the idea behind this is to set a short and precise description of the location, and in most cases your equipment or hosted infrastructure is located in a datacenter in a bigger city that has an airport.
Here is an overview of the bigger airports in Germany:
| Airport Code | City |
| CGN | Cologne |
| DUS | Düsseldorf |
| HAM | Hamburg |
| MUC | Munich |
| STR | Stuttgart |
A complete overview of all airport codes all over the world you can find here:
https://www.world-airport-codes.com/
VMV is the short for VMware (vSphere Foundation/Cloud Foundation).
Of course, you can shorten any other hypervisor platform or OS (this list is not complete but has the popular workloads):
| Abbreviations | Description |
| VMV | VMware vSphere |
| HV | Microsoft Hyper-V |
| PVE | Proxmox Virtual Environment |
| AHV | Nutanix AHV |
| MVE | HPE Morpheus VM Essentials |
| PHY | Physical Clients |
| NAS | Unstructured Data (File or Object) |
APP stands in the case of this VM Backup for Application, but you also have Databases or NAS Jobs FILES.
| Abbreviations | Description |
| APP | Application Aware Workloads |
| WL | Standard Workloads without any Application Aware Processing |
| MGMT | Management Workloads without Application Aware Processing |
| WINDOWS | Microsoft Windows Operating Systems |
| LINUX | Linux (DEB/RPM) Operating Systems |
| FILES | File Backup for NAS or Object |
7D stands for the retention in this example for seven days or one week.
I personally handle it so that all retention over 31D is mentioned in months, for example, like 6M, and the same for all that’s over 12 months; then it goes over to years, like 3Y:
| Abbreviations | Description |
| 7D | Seven Days of Retention |
| 4W | Four Weeks of Retention |
| 12M | Twelve Months of Retention |
| 3Y | Three Years of Retention |
For GFS Retention, I handle it like this: 7D-4W-12M-3Y
Here are also a few examples for different jobs:
| Name | Description |
| B2D-FRA-NAS-FILES-31D | Backup to Disk, Frankfurt, File Share (NetApp Filer/Production Data), 31 days retention
|
| BC-FRA2CGN-PVE-APP-31D-12M-3Y | Backup Copy (Scale-Out Repository CGN), Frankfurt, Proxmox VE, Application servers, 31 day/12 month/3 year retention |
| B2C-FRA-PHY-WIN-14D | Backup to Cloud (Wasabi EU Central 1 (Amsterdam)), Frankfurt, Physical, Windows server, 14 day |
And that’s it!
I hope I could give some ideas for structuring your Veeam jobs.
This overview will grow and evolve over time!
