Request: SureBackup & Backup Copy Job Awareness

  • 13 January 2021
  • 6 comments
  • 210 views

Userlevel 7
Badge +20

Hi,

 

A feature I believe would be extremely useful would be scheduling SureBackup around the completion of a Backup Copy Job. Backup Copy Jobs aren’t scheduled the same as usual jobs so I understand the additional complexity around this however the reason for my request is simple.

One of SureBackup’s primary limitations is Disk IO, if we create a SureBackup job to run after a backup job is complete, a Backup Copy Job could then start consuming IO to transmit this backup to an archive tier, Cloud Connect or to some other secondary repository. This creates contention for IO with SureBackup, impacting the ability to validate virtual machines.

A key example of this behaviour is when VMware Tools fails to start within the traditional 30 seconds (I’m aware of registry keys that can amend this behaviour, but it’s just one example). If we could chain either BCJ’s to run after a backup is validated (so we know we’re copying good data firstly) or even inversely whereby we run SureBackup after the copy just to avoid contending for IO, both of these would help validate recoverability. Currently the best workaround is to schedule SureBackup for a time when you don’t believe that any disk IO contention should occur, but this is a best effort as retention policies can always throw your calculations off!

What do you think, anyone else agree with this?


6 comments

Userlevel 7
Badge +13

If I get you right, you would like to schedule a SureBackup job like a backup job? As workaround you could do:

  1. Create a vSphere Tag, assigned to no VM
  2. Create a Backup job, selecting this Tag
  3. Create a Script (PowerShell, Batch,..) that starts your SureBackup job and define this script as a pre/post script in the job.
  4. Schedule this job as you like.

So this job will just runs your script and thus starts SureBackup. Yes, it is not beautiful, but it works.

Userlevel 7
Badge +20

If I get you right, you would like to schedule a SureBackup job like a backup job? As workaround you could do:

  1. Create a vSphere Tag, assigned to no VM
  2. Create a Backup job, selecting this Tag
  3. Create a Script (PowerShell, Batch,..) that starts your SureBackup job and define this script as a pre/post script in the job.
  4. Schedule this job as you like.

So this job will just runs your script and thus starts SureBackup. Yes, it is not beautiful, but it works.

Hi @vNote42, not quite. Once a backup has completed we can chain one or multiple jobs to run off the back of this such as additional backups or SureBackup tasks via the “after this job” scheduling option. However we can’t schedule to run a SureBackup after a BCJ nor can we schedule a BCJ to run after a SureBackup.

 

This is something I believe is important on lower end storage especially to ensure that the IO of the repository isn’t oversaturated and prevents VMs booting in a timely manner from SureBackup, thereby failing validation

Userlevel 6
Badge +1

This is a good use case for the backup copy job to the cloud so we can spin the VMs on the cloud to validate the backup. 

Userlevel 7
Badge +20

This is a good use case for the backup copy job to the cloud so we can spin the VMs on the cloud to validate the backup. 

I can see your point about that as a use case, as there could be dedicated cloud resources that could be used for this validation, hadn’t considered that. I just think it’d be nice to have BCJ’s conform to more normal job behaviour with relation to chaining.

Userlevel 7
Badge +8

I use scheduler tools like rundeck or ansible to do that or other task who need chaining (not only veeam!) maybe i could be useful for you :)

Userlevel 7
Badge +20

I use scheduler tools like rundeck or ansible to do that or other task who need chaining (not only veeam!) maybe i could be useful for you :)

That’s a good insight, though to coerce Backup Copy Jobs to play along would involve manual disabling and enabling. I’ll see how complex it is thanks 😁

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