Deleting server from backup job

[withanh]

I have a server that I took out of the backup job, but in the backup files it appears the server is still there. I keep the last 30 backups, but in this backup job there are currently 57 files in the job folder on the disk. When I check Backups in VBR it says there are still 30 restore points for that server with the creation time of 12/5/2010. About a month ago I ran a full backup expecting the old server to eventually drop out but it did not. And the old .vbk is still there (and huge). What will happen to my backups if I delete the server from the backups (aka restore window)? Will all the extra .vrb files go away (as well as the old .vbk)?

Thanks,

h

[Gostev]

Yes, exactly. We will keep the specified amount of restore points for any VM included deleted (according to retention policy in the job settings), until you confirm you no longer need this VM by deleting it from backup. We cannot know if VM was purposely deleted from your infrastructure, or it was administration mistake which you may want to correct later...

[withanh]

Thanks Anton,

That's what I hoped would happen. It seems like this behavior is different from v4. When I have stopped backing up a server previously, it drops all restore copies except for the one that's left in the full .vbk.

h

[Gostev]

v5 added VM level retention feature (What's New has some information about this), which is why the behavior is different - deleted VMs can now be "holding" your backup files. v4 retention policy style resulted in some support cases where some customers experienced data loss by unintentionally deleting VM from infrastructure, and noticing this only in few weeks, when it was too late already (VM was dropped from backup already). Of course, everyone should really be creating (offsite) backup copies for long-term retention, but apparently not everyone is practicing this due to lack of storage available.

By the way, in the next update we are planning to add functionality to automatically clean up deleted VMs data after set number of days, so that you don't have to babysit your backups as VMs are deleted (and be able to disable keeping deleted VMs data altogether by setting this to 1 day).

[withanh]

Excellent. I was certain that I wasn't imagining things