Archive Backup Chain

If you enable backup archiving for a backup policy, Veeam Backup for AWS creates a new backup file in an archive repository during every archive session. A sequence of backup files created during a set of archive sessions makes up an archive backup chain.

The archive backup chain includes backup files of the following types:

• Full — a full archive backup file stores a copy of the full EC2 instance image.
• Incremental — incremental archive backup files store incremental changes of the EC2 instance image.

To create an archive backup chain for a EC2 instance protected by a backup policy, Veeam Backup for AWS implements the forever forward incremental backup method:

1. During the first archive session, Veeam Backup for AWS detects backed-up data that is stored in the full backup file and all incremental backup files existing in the standard backup chain, creates a full archive backup file with all the data, and copies this file to the archive repository. The full archive backup file becomes a starting point in the archive chain.
2. During subsequent archive sessions, Veeam Backup for AWS checks the standard backup chain to detect data blocks that have changed since the previous archive session, creates incremental archive backup files with only those changed blocks, and copies these files to the archive repository. The content of each incremental archive backup file depends on the content of the full archive backup file and the preceding incremental archive backup files in the archive backup chain.

Full and incremental archive backup files act as restore points for backed-up EC2 instances that let you roll back instance data to the necessary state. To recover an EC2 instance to a specific point in time, the chain of backup files created for the instance must contain a full archive backup file and a set of incremental archive backup files.

If some file in the archive backup chain is missing, you will not be able to roll back to the necessary state. For this reason, you must not delete individual backup files from the archive repository manually. Instead, you must specify retention policy settings that will let you maintain the necessary number of backup files in the archive repository. For more information, see Retention Policy for Archived Backups.

Related Topics

Enabling Backup Archiving