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gpomanti
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Manually Remove GFS Restore Points

Post by gpomanti »

I tried searching the forums but I didn't find any topics that answered my specific question. I'm wondering if it is possible to manually delete a GFS retention point.

We implemented Veeam v8 about a month ago and everything is working great. In our current architecture, we have our VM's being backed to a primary backup repository on site. We then have copy jobs copying the backups to a Data Domain on site with the retention policy set to 7 daily's, 4 weekly's, 12 monthly's, and 1 yearly. The Data Domain onsite then replicates the backups to a second Data Domain offsite, which works very well. The problem is that our primary onsite Data Domain has plenty of capacity to store all of the GFS backups copies, but the secondary offsite Data Domain does not.

Ideally, we want the onsite Data Domain to keep the long term retention points while the offsite Data Domain only keeps the 7 daily copies. Would it be possible to manually clear the weekly and monthly GFS copies from the offsite data domain? I'm trying to avoid setting up two copy jobs with different GFS retention.
Gostev
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Re: Manually Remove GFS Restore Points

Post by Gostev »

Sure, you can do that. These are totally isolated files. I don't know how much this will save you though (considering that most of their content is deduped anyway). Perhaps just a tiny bit.
gpomanti
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Re: Manually Remove GFS Restore Points

Post by gpomanti »

Great, thanks for the quick reply! For now, we are going to let everything keep replicating and see if the smaller data domain can handle it.
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[MERGED] CopyJob - GFS - Delete Restore Points

Post by Berniebgf »

Hi All,

I have a legacy CopyJob with GFS that I want to delete the older GFS restore points (each month) out of and leave more current in place, this needs to be performed as we transition to a new Backup Solution (for this specific VM) to free up space.

I have the following restore points on the GFS enabled Copy Job

1. 30 x Daily Backups
2 ~11 Monthly GFS Full's
3. 1 Yearly GFS Full.

How can I safely delete the older Monthly Restore points without effecting the remaining restore points?

thanks

Bernard
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Re: CopyJob - GFS - Delete Restore Points

Post by foggy »

Yes, feel free to delete them. Keep in mind though that corresponding records will still be displayed in the Veeam B&R console, according to your retention settings.
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[MERGED] : GFS backupcopy and archival restorepoint

Post by Mattias »

Hi!

I did run out of disk space on the storage that stores archival GFS backup points.

I did have

weekly 5
Monthly 12
Quarterly 0
Yearly 10

Now i copied the only yearly i had (it have only run with this for one year) to another storage. Then i changed the setup to:

weekly 5
Monthly 12
Quarterly 0
Yearly 0

The problem is that it has not yet deleted the yearly backup and i need it to be deleted before the end of this month or the disk will be full. What is my best option now ? When will it be automatically deleted ? ever ? Should i manually delete it from disk now ? I am trying to have veeam do it so it is aware of it. Im afraid if i manually delete it then veeam will get confused and get an error when it tries to find the yearly backup later on.

thanks for the help !

Regards Mattias
veremin
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Re: Manually Remove GFS Restore Points

Post by veremin »

Hi, Mattias,

Manual deletion of those points should not cause any issues.

Thanks.
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Re: Manually Remove GFS Restore Points

Post by keksbert »

Hi,

Is it possible to cleanly delete gfs restore points using powershell.
I do not find any "property" or "method" that indicate a restore point as a gfs point.
I just find "creation time" and several "id"-properties but nothing like "IsGFS =True" or something like that.
I would like delete files in my repository named "*_Y.vbk" (f.e Job012016-01-03T000000_Y) by deleting all associated vm restorepoints.

For some of my customers manual deletion is no option because of strict regulations.
If the veeam gui shows restore points not working, they will not pass backup audits.

Thanks in advance for your feedback
veremin
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Re: Manually Remove GFS Restore Points

Post by veremin »

Since you're after manual deletion, haven't you thought about using ordinary Windows PowerShell cmdlet, such as Get-Item and Remove-Item? Points to be deleted can be found based on the post-fixes they have (_M,_Q, etc.). Thanks.
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Re: Manually Remove GFS Restore Points

Post by keksbert »

I know how to delete files manually via file explorer or powershell. But afterwords I still have these restorepoints in the veeam database and they are still selectable in veeam gui for restore operations.
So I want to select all vm restore points based on GFS full backups and delete them using veeam powershell command.

Logical command: Get-VBRRestorePoint | "GFS-filter" | Remove-VBRRestorePoint

Thanks.
veremin
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Re: Manually Remove GFS Restore Points

Post by veremin »

In this case the better approach would be to decrease the GFS retention period for unneeded points. In this case those points would be deleted from the both disk and product db in the most smooth way. Thanks.
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Re: Manually Remove GFS Restore Points

Post by keksbert »

Obviously.
I never tried that before but it work like a charm.
The gui ask me to confirm the deletion of corresponding restore points.
That's a good workaround for me. Thanks so far.

Now I've written a script to set gfs options or to disable gfs.
While testing I noticed that existing gfs restore points are just deleted from database when I'm using veeam gui to change gfs options.
Is there any way to get a automatism with powershell.

Code: Select all

# get all backup copy jobs
$jobs = Get-VBRJob | where {$PSITEM.JobType -eq "BackupSync"}

# set option to all backup copy jobs
foreach($job in $jobs)
{
    # set gfs settings
      #$options = $job.GetOptions()
      #$options.GenerationPolicy.GFSWeeklyBackups="0"
      #$options.GenerationPolicy.GFSYearlyBackups="0"
      #$options.GenerationPolicy.GFSMonthlyBackups="0"
      #$options.GenerationPolicy.GFSQuarterlyBackups="0"
    # set retention policy to simple to deactivate gfs
      $options.GenerationPolicy.RetentionPolicyType = "Simple"

    # write change to configuration
    $job | Set-VBRJobOptions -Options $options
}
veremin
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Re: Manually Remove GFS Restore Points

Post by veremin »

Is there any way to get a automatism with powershell.
Can you elaborate on what kind of automatism you're looking for? It might be worth creating a separate discussion on PS subforum and asking particular questions about scripting there. Thanks.
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[MERGED] Run only retention for a copy job...possible?

Post by bjdboyer »

Have a customer that was doing GFS as part of their copy job offsite. They are no longer an active backup customer but we are keeping their data around for the yearly retention on the monthly GFS. so the copy job isn't running (disabled) any longer. Is there a way to run the retention to get the expired monthly GFS copies to delete from the repository? That would save me a couple of TB repository space every month I could get them deleted. Really don't want to have to manually delete the disk files and then remove them from inventory after a rescan.

TIA,
Bill
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Re: Manually Remove GFS Restore Points

Post by PTide »

Hi,

Please check this thread for possible solutions.

Thanks
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Re: Manually Remove GFS Restore Points

Post by bjdboyer »

I think I can do these steps:

1. Go to the directory for the job that has the GFS files.
2. Sort by date so you see the oldest files first, which should be all the *_M.vbk monthly GFS files.
3. Delete those with dates prior to the retention policy
4. Rescan the repository
5. In the console in the Backups\Disk(copy) right-click properties on the job
6. the *_M.vbk files that were deleted will show as unavailable. Red 'X' and italics font.
7. Right-click, Forget->All unavailable backups

Thoughts?

Bill
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Re: Manually Remove GFS Restore Points

Post by PTide »

Yes, you can just manually remove the points and perform a repository rescan.

Another option would be to simply reduce the number of GFS points to keep and let BCJ run one more time so it will clean out the restore points automatically.

Thanks
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