This week I updated all of my employer’s Veeam Backup and Replication servers to version 8 update 1.
One of the nice features of Veeam BR 8 is its new Forever Forward Incremental Backup method.
The FFIB method produces a backup chain that consists of the first full backup and a set of forward incremental backups following it. Veeam creates a full backup file in the backup repository on the first run. For subsequent backup jobs, only the data blocks that have changed since the last performed backup are saved as an incremental backup file in the backup chain.
This FFIB method eliminates the previous need to periodically perform synthetic full backups (heavy read and write IO requirements on the backup repository) or active full backups (heavy read IO requirements from the source, as well as heavy network or fiber traffic).
The FFIB method is now the default method for all new backup jobs. Existing backup jobs, however, must be configured to use FFIB without synthetic fulls or active fulls. If you have a lot of Veeam servers and backup jobs, it could take some time to manually change them to use the new FFIB method.
Thankfully, Preben Berg created a handy PowerShell script that will convert all of your backup jobs to the new FFIB method. Luca Dell’Oca then posted the script on virtualtothecore.com. Please see “Change all your Veeam backup jobs to the new forward forever-incremental” to obtain the Veeam PowerShell script.