Forum ©XSIBackup: ©VMWare ©ESXi Backup Software

herrep

Member

From: Munich

Registered: 2019-07-08

Posts: 107

Best practice to keep a set of n full backup sets based on onediff

Hi,

xsibackup is a great tool with a lot of options and I am still working on a final configuration that automatically maintains a certain most recent set of backups without manually deleting old backups.

The xsibackup option backup-room is a nice tool to maintain an automatic backup solution that works fine with backups based on backup-prog=xsitools.

However, I would like to keep a most recent number of backup sets created with backup-prog=onediff. I understand the purpose of onediff as differential backup. It only requires data that were added to the previous backup. At the end of a backup cycle, the previous backup is updated to the recent state of the virtual machine that has been backed up with onediff. I appreciate that a onediff backup set is ready-to-use. This is the reason why I would not only keep the most recent version, but a few of them, for example four backup sets on a weekly basis.

I failed with the option date-dir=yes. Obviously, there would be conceptional problems by creating separate directories for each following backup runs, as onediff requires a previous backup set in order to perform its differential operation.

Nevertheless, I wonder whether there is a "best practice" to automatically keep a particular amount (e.g., four) of ready-to-use backup sets in regular intervals (e.g., weekly) based on bakup-prog=onediff.

I understand that full backups based on backup-prog=vmkfstools do not suffer from this problem, as I can use date-dir=yes and monitor available disk space via backup-room. However, it would be great if I could keep a certain number of full backup sets based on onediff.

Thanks for your comments!

Best regards,
Peter

Last edited by herrep (2019-07-13 09:16:41)

admin

Administrator

Registered: 2017-04-21

Posts: 2,072

Re: Best practice to keep a set of n full backup sets based on onediff

Onediff is not a backup method, it is actually a replica method, it just keeps a mirrrored VM. Thus if you need multiple restore points, you should perform a backup on addition to Onediff.

The best part is that as Onediff allows you to keep the VM registered on a remote end, performing a backup on this idle VM will not affect performance in your production environment.

So run a Onediff cycle and then run an XSITools backup on the mirrrored VM, that will allow you to keep a virtually unlimited number of restore points on addition to the ready to use Onediff mirror.