Enhancement Request: Delete Specific VBAZ Manual Snapshots

[ratkinsonuk]

Re case #08009612.

We're trying to use Veeam in Azure to take a snapshot of the VM before we apply O/S patches so we have something to restore back to if there are any issues. The snapshot would be held for a couple of days and then deleted. These would sit alongside the requirement for other manual snapshots, such as for application upgrades.

We have a couple of problems...

- VBAZ doesn't allow an automatic retention for manual snapshots, which would be great as I wouldn't have to script my own housekeeping

- The API for deleting manual snapshots only goes down to server level, and doesn't allow specific manual snapshots to be deleted (https://helpcenter.veeam.com/references ... lSnapshots)

- Although the API allows for custom tags to be assigned to manual snapshots, there's nothing regarding a description/reason field which I think would make sense when reviewing and housekeeping old snapshots

Please can I request an enhancement to add this additional functionality.

It's possible to identify and delete the snapshots from the Azure API, but the Veeam documentation specifically says not to do this. I believe the documentation is talking about snapshots that form part of the backup chain, and not manual snapshots. It would be good to get a view from R&D on this as it may be a workaround.

Thanks, Rob.

[nielsengelen]

Hi Rob,

If you manually create a snaphot, you can remove those via the "Available Restore Points" popup by opening it from the "Protected Data" page and then filter for the VM. If you then select the number of Restore Points (from the column), you will see a button "Remove Manual Snapshot".

We'll look into custom retention for a future release.

[ratkinsonuk]

Apologies Neils, I should have clarified. I was already aware and re-confirmed by the support staff that this is something that's available from the GUI. However, it needs to be automatable as we'll have over 600 patching snapshots every month to deal with - not something we can do manually.

That actually leads me to another question.

According to recent comments, R&D are going to structure the Veeam internals so that everything goes through the REST API layer. That means the VBAZ appliance GUI may already be using the REST API to remove individual manual snapshots. Is that something that exists but hasn't been documented or are you still running directly through a .Net layer for VBAZ?

[nielsengelen]

Hi Robert,

Do you really need to delete them 1 by 1? Since we do have an option to delete all manual snapshots at once, wouldn't this be a better solution then?