Creating Active Full Backups in Command Line Interface

You can create an ad-hoc full backup — active full backup — and add it to the backup chain on the target storage. The active full backup resets the backup chain. All subsequent incremental backups use the active full backup as a starting point. The previously used full backup will remain on the target storage until it is removed from the backup chain according to the retention policy.

Before you create an active full backup, check the following prerequisites:

The backup job must be configured.
You cannot create an active full backup if a backup task of any type is currently running.

To perform active full backup, use the following command:

veeamconfig job start --name <job_name> --activefull

veeamconfig job start --id <job_id> --activefull

where:

<job_name> — name of the backup job that you want to start to create an active full backup.
<job_id> — ID of the backup job that you want to start to create an active full backup.

For example:

$ veeamconfig job start --name SystemBackup --activefull
Backup job has been started.
Session ID: [{ce864e24-8211-4df7-973a-741adce96fe7}].
Logs stored in: [/var/log/veeam/Backup/SystemBackup/Session_20200316_122900_{ce864e24-8211-4df7-973a-741adce96fe7}].

You can view the progress for the active full backup session in the same way as for any other backup job session. In particular, you can check the backup job session status or view the backup job session log using the Veeam Agent command line interface.

You can also monitor the backup job performance in the Veeam Agent control panel. To learn more, see Viewing Real-Time Job Session Statistics.