Leftover backup files a year later

[onthax]

running into a curious issue

have several backups configured for Forward Incremental with weekly active fulls.
However we have a few VMs that still have points since march.

When checking the settings, under Full backup file maintenance, we have "Remove deleted items data after x days" turned off.
the window reads.

use these setting to defragment and compact full backup file periodically when the job schedule does not include periodic fulls.

Does this have to be enabled to cleanup fulls in general?
Thought this was only for synthetic fulls/chains?

[soncscy]

Hey onthax,

I think the two options are separate. Deleted items (VMs not being backed up) is its own independent option.

I've seen this when we had a VM get a new RefID, and it showed by having duplicate backups under Backups > Disk. Check there and see if there are two sets for your VM. If so, you can turn on this option I guess and just let it delete out, or manually delete these ones from the Backups > Disk.

[onthax]

Soncsy,

Gave it a go and it cleaned up the old deleted vms, we have 140 jobs though, so hoping for an official response before we reconfigure them all.

[soncscy]

Well, I think you could automate this with powershell

post332206.html?hilit=deleted%20vm%20retention#p332079

Code: Select all

Asnp VeeamPSSnapin
$Jobs = Get-VBRJob

For ($job in Jobs) {
$Options = $Job.GetOptions()
$Options.generationpolicy.EnableDeletedVmDataRetention = $True
$Options.generationpolicy.DeletedVmsDataRetentionPeriodDays = ''Desired number of days"
Set-VBRJobOptions -Job $Job -Options $Options}

I think that's how you do it in powershell, but I do bash more than ps.

[foggy]

If you have per-VM backup chains enabled on your repository, deleted VMs retention applies even in case with periodic fulls.

[onthax]

Thanks Foggy,

That makes sense, Didn't pick it up when we changed to per VM chains a while back.