Delete Restore Points

[etretout]

Hy,

My HDD is full and I want to make free space. I show that I have 3 or 4 restore points in all backup.

How can i delete some restore points.

Best regards

Emmanuel

[Vitaliy S.]

Hello Emmanuel,

You can reduce the retention policy value at advanced settings of your job configuration, that will automatically remove the oldest restore points for your backups.

Please be aware that retention policy check is performed at the end of the job, so if you're not able to run the job rigth now due to lack of free space, you may delete just the oldest VRB file (the last available restore point) manually at the destination storage and re-run the job, this restore point will also be deleted from the Veeam SQL configuration DB automatically with retention policy as soon as your job finishes successfully.

Thank you!

[marius roma]

Can I delete old .vib and .vbk files if I am sure I don't need them?
Regards
marius

[veremin]

Reduce the number of restore points kept by the given job and let retention policy do it work. Thanks.

[Vitaliy S.]

Marius, deleting restore points manually is highly not recommended, as you might end up with orphaned restore point entries in the SQL configuration database.

[wiz]

Hello,
I use Veeam Backup & Replication to backup my Vmware infrastructure. I have a problem : one of my virtual machines is big (3To). My backup repository is often Full ( How can I delete old backups without loosing all backup datas)?

Thanks

[veremin]

Specify shorter retention policy and let it delete old restore points automatically. Thanks.

[wiz]

Hello,
Can I delete manually some restore points?

[veremin]

What backup method you're using? Reversed or forward incremental one? In the latter case, how many are there restore points, counting from the latest full backup and what restore points you want to delete? Thanks.

[foggy]

As it is stated above, it is not recommended to delete backup files manually, but let retention algorithm to handle that. However, if you need to free up some space to let backups complete successfully, you can remove older restore points manually, though they will still remain in the SQL configuration database as an available restore points (until flushed away by retention). If you are using reverse incremental backup mode, just delete the oldest .VRB files by their modified date. For forward incremental mode, you have to remove the oldest .VBK along with all the corresponding .VIB files.

To address space issues, it is recommended to configure built-in Veeam B&R space notifications or use one of the Veeam ONE predefined reports - Capacity Planning for backup repositories.

[kkuszek]

So what if I want to delete *specific* restore points.
For example, what if I want to keep the oldest one, but delete some specific incremental points in between?
Veeam has restore points not restore point age (aka 30 points not 30 days of backups) so it isn't always consistently aligned with my retention. Yes it's about storage space but I would prefer to be able to pick and choose "this was an important day, I want to delete backups to make space from the rest of the week but keep this day"etc.
Sometimes there are specific needs. Is there no way to browse restore points and delete a specific one for a specific machine?

[veremin]

For example, what if I want to keep the oldest one, but delete some specific incremental points in between?

Is it a full backup you're talking about? Or you're willing to preserve some old incremental point? By the way, what backup mode is being used?

[tdewin]

For example, what if I want to keep the oldest one, but delete some specific incremental points in between?

Remember they are incremental backups not differential backups. In a backup chain, they are all linked together and dependent on each other. Well actually the one furthest away from the full is dependent on the whole chain. Deleting files in the middle would corrupt the chain. In other words, one increment is not necessarily dependent on the VBK/full directly but rather on the chain.

Anyway what you propose would require to rebuild the next point in the chain to store unique changes that are not in the parent which is not possible.

[mkaec]

Being able to manually delete restore points is a feature I would like to one day see included in the product. If someone is seeking this functionality, there is a good chance that there is already an out of space situation. So, changing the retention settings and running a backup isn't likely to work. We see from this thread that it is possible to manually delete restore points by messing with the files, but we also see there are lots of opportunities for error. I myself lost an entire backup chain once trying to manually to delete some old restore points.

[DGrinev]

Hi Marc,

It is always high risk of broken chains, especially when you try delete restore point in the middle of the backup chain.
There are a few tools in Veeam ONE to avoid situations when you are running out of free disk space unexpectedly:
1. Capacity planning for backup repositories.
2. Setup alarms to be aware of low disk space in advance.

Thanks!

[marius roma]

I have a backup job that creates a full backup exery Sunday and incremental backup during week days.
Can I manually delete old and full incremental backup files and keep files from a given full backup?
Regards
marius

[DGrinev]

Hi Mario,

You can reduce the number of restore points kept and let Veeam to remove expired restore points.
Can you clarify why it's necessary to delete old restore points manually? Thanks!

[marius roma]

Because the files belong to a backup job that is no more active and I want to keep only the latest ones.
Regards
Marius

[DGrinev]

Yes, you can delete old restore points manually, but keep in mind it's not recommended practice.
Please review existing thread for additional information. Thanks!

[davbarrio]

Hi,
i also suffer this problem. Retention Policy doesn´t seem to work, so a lot of restore points keep saved in our Backups Storage.

Several weeks ago, i finally get to remove manually old full synthetic and all his incremental points ... but i know it´s no good doing that manually ..

So, i also find this link with help about the problem: https://my.veeam.com/#/kb1990

... but i can´t believe i must re-configure all jobs because now Retention Policy it´s not working ...

Is there any new solution for this error? Can somebody help me with this?

Thanks.

Regards.

[foggy]

Hi David, from your description it's not clear why retention is not applied in your case, however, there could be several reasons for that, as you can see from this thread and the mentioned KB article. If your jobs are set up in a way where synthetic full doesn't occur (jobs are chained, for example, not letting full to start), there's nothing you can do but re-consider jobs configuration to avoid this behavior. Hard to advise without knowing more about your setup, so I recommend contacting support, if you need further assistance.

[labsy]

I agree that it's 2018 year and Veeam as a solid product should have option to manually sanitize and remove older restore points built-in. Messing with restore points manually might lead to errors, incosintency between actualy backups and what's stores in database. Only product itself should be able to safely delete restore points and handle possible user mistakes.

[foggy]

Hi Andrej, overall I agree and that's why we typically do not recommend deleting backup files manually, outside of the product. Generally it is not required, since backup chain length is maintained according to retention settings. However, there are situations (e.g. hardware failures or incorrect configuration mentioned above) when manual intervention might be needed to synchronize disk state with the database. Our support is always ready to handle such situations.

[mkaec]

How easy is it to recover from the situation in which the repository runs out of disk space? That's a common manual delete scenario. Lowering the retention and then running the job won't work since deletion is done after the new backup is taken.

[foggy]

It depends on the backup method and what files are currently stored on disk. If you are able to delete some of the older files (f.ex. the oldest full with related increments in case of simple forward incremental mode), it's pretty easy.

[mkaec]

I guess the "it depends on the backup method" may be the reason why customers are asking for a way to do it through the GUI. Then the GUI would always do the right thing instead of customers risking making a mistake trying to do it manually.

[Stephan_84]

I would like to use this option as well.

[SBarrett847]

The lack an the ability to cleanly deal with full repositories is the bane of my life as an MSP.

[grinternalit]

I'd like to add my voice to the need for this. Don't have enough space to re-run the whole backup to simply apply a change in retention policy.

I suggest that at the very least, a new right-click menu option be added to the job to "apply current retention policy". That way I can edit the job to decrease the retention policy, save it, then apply the retention policy to remove old backups without having to re-run the backup.

[nmdange]

I just ran into a space issue myself and it would have made things easier being able to apply an updated retention policy without having to run the job again.