Retention for backups on SOBR

[StanoSedliak]

Hi,

can you please advise if I have a correct idea how its working with retention on SOBR.

Setup:

Backup job - incremental - active full backup monthly on third Saturday
Retention policy: 45 days
Checked Keep certain full backups longer for archival purposes - keep monthly full backups for 6 months

SOBR local storage + azure blob:
checked copy backups to object storage
checked move backups to object storage - move backup files older than 30 days

My expectation was that the full backup for archive purposes what Veeam should keep for 6 months will be available on the blob storage as the move mode should move every backup older than 30days to capacity tier. As we are doing once per month a full the backup chain is finished he can just keep the full archive backups on blob. But what I can see now after 2 months, he is not keeping the full backups for archival purposes anywhere. I had a full backup from 12/2020 and today Veeam deleted the backups with info:

Removing 'XXXXX2020-12-17T190041_B511.vbk' per retention policy

So now I have oldest backup from 01/2021. Do I need to setup something else or is working another way?

Thank you!

[Gostev]

Hi, from your description it looks like you set everything correctly. What you're doing is a very typical configuration. I would expect the monthly backup from 12/2020 to still be present on the Capacity Tier. Please open a support case and have them review if and why retention policy removed it. Thanks!

[veremin]

Could it happen that you've enabled GFS retention period, after the said full was created? Backup server assigns GFS flags only to those backup files that are created after the configuration. Also, you can right-click on the given backup, open its properties and see whether full backups are marked as GFS restore points. Thanks!

[StanoSedliak]

Hi, thank you both for the fast reaction.

Yes, I set the GFS only few weeks ago as before there was no request to keep backups for 6 month. So there is no possibility to mark it now manually after I have another full backup which is not flagged and will be deleted?
Only possibility is to copy it from capacity tier to performance tier and keep it there?

Thank you!

[Gostev]

You can use Export Backup feature to keep the restore points that would otherwise be deleted by retention.

[StanoSedliak]

Thank you for the hint with export backup.
If I have now a backup only on the capacity tier and I will now do a export of the backup I guess it will download the backups from capacity tier (cloud) to the performance tier and place the exported full backup to the performance tier (on-premise storage)?

So the cons are:
- that I need to download backup files from capacity tier
- I need space on performance tier (on-premise) storage
- if I want to keep it only on capacity tier I need to move it again to cloud

Thank you!

[foggy]

Hi Stano, correct, currently the backup exported from the object storage will be placed in the performance tier, however, we have plans to address that.