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About Backup Copy

With backup copy, you can create several instances of the same backup file and copy them to secondary (target) backup repositories for long-term storage. Target backup repositories can be located in the same site as the source backup repository, or can be deployed offsite. The backup copy file has the same format as the primary backup, so you can restore necessary data directly from it in case of a disaster.

Veeam Backup & Replication supports backup copy for the following types of backups:

  • VM backups created with Veeam Backup & Replication
  • Backups of Amazon EC2 instances created with Veeam Backup for AWS

With backup copy jobs, you can transfer backups of EC2 instances to on-premises repositories.

  • Backups of physical and virtual machines created with Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows
  • Backups of physical and virtual machines created with Veeam Agent for Linux
  • VM backups created with Veeam Availability for Nutanix AHV

Veeam Backup & Replication copies backup data per machine at the block level. That is, it does not copy the whole VBK, VIB or VRB files from the source to target backup repository. Instead, it works with data of separate machines stored in these files.

When the backup copying process starts, Veeam Backup & Replication accesses backup files on the source backup repository, retrieves data blocks for a specific machine from the backup file, copies them to the target backup repository, and composes copied blocks into a backup file on the target backup repository. The backup copying process does not affect virtual and physical infrastructure resources, does not require creation of additional VM checkpoints or VSS snapshots and does not produce load on machines whose backups are copied.

In Veeam Backup & Replication, backup copy is a job-driven process. To copy backups, you need to configure backup copy jobs. The backup copy job defines when, what, how and where to copy.

One backup copy job can be used to process one or multiple VMs. VMs included in the job are processed in parallel. If a VM included in the backup copy job has multiple disks, disks are processed sequentially, one after another.

On the target backup repository, the backup copy job creates a forever forward incremental backup chain. The target backup repository always contains only one active incremental backup chain. Restore points in the chain are rotated according to the retention policy. For more information, see Retention Policy for Backup Copy Jobs.

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