How veeam delete old restore point?

[babarc]

Hello, last night the job return me an error: i haven't more space on the disk to storage the backup. After 4 automatic attemp magically lots of space were available and the job was successful.
I think veeam has deleted old restore point based on policy retention...
WHEN veeam delete old file? why i have 3 error and then, the same job witouh any manual intervention, was terminated successfully?
Thanks

[foggy]

The retention policy is applied at the end of each successful job run.

My guess is that the job failed on the active/synthetic full day due to insufficient space (along with 3 default retry attempts) but the next day incremental finished successfully (as full is not scheduled for that day) allowing the retention policy to clean up some space. Could this be the case?

[liviu.tutuianu]

Hello to all,

We have a similar problem. On one our branches, we have set 21 restore points for a job. After some cycles of 21 restore point, one day (because the data amount from those VM's grew from one day to another), we saw that we didn't have enough available space for another backup.

So, in this case, we needed to reduce the number of restore points to 18. What would be the best practice in this case: should we wait for the new replication job to complete using the new set value of restore points or we can delete manually some of the old restore points? If deleting manually is the solution, how should we choose the oldest restore points?

[foggy]

You can remove 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 incrementals, you have to remove the oldest vbk along with all the corresponding vib files (so, possibly, the whole week of backups).

[Jamie Pert]

It would be neat if Veeam could do this for you - right click on the backup and flush it from the repository and Veeam database. Obviously this would work for certain methods, not standard incremental. I always get a bit worried when manually deleting files

[dellock6]

It's completely safe to delete old VRB files, since in reverse you always have the full one as the newest one.
I see anyway a problem in Veeam deleting old VRB files for two reasons:
- you are violating your own retention policy
- Veeam cannot know in advance how much space a new backup will occupy, so it will have to do it "on the fly" while backup is running. Not impossible, and maybe a good feature for the future. If you know you will violate your retention, you can choose to do so.

[quangspk]

Hi all,

I'm using Veeam B&R 6.

My disk is full now. I need to delete some restore point (the old backup) to reclaim my disk space. Help me pls!

Thanks all.

[Ejdesgaard]

Hi,

I just ran out of space and got a incomplete last backup and another backup 2 weeks ago. Both are .vbk files and I can't figure out how to remove them correctly.

B&R version: 6.0.0.153
Destination: SMB
Server: 2008R2

[Tom.M]

Hi,
we have configured a backup repository of 11TB, but I guess we configured to much restore points (10 each), so yesterday night the repository ran full, no more disk space.

How can I fix this? Is it just lowering the amount of restore points in each backup job to get again more diskspace?

Thanks in advance, regards
Tom

[Vitaliy S.]

Yes, that's correct. Just apply new retention policy settings and run your jobs.

[kjstech]

I have a backup repo (7.1TB) that is full. Two jobs failed because it has 0kb free space.

I changed my restore points in these jobs from 14 days to 8 days. Next time these jobs run, will they delete backups from day 9,10,11,12,13 and 14, therefore freeing up enough space for the job to run? Ideally this should work if it does that deletion BEFORE it tries to write (because of 0kb).
I am also moving a 133GB exchange ntbackup file off this repo to another, so that will give me a little breathing room.

Is there a way to run a job that doesn't backup but deletes all but maybe the last 3 or 4 restore points?

[foggy]

Keith, no, there's no such a way, please see the details above. You should manually free the space up to let the job finish successfully.

[kjstech]

Keith, no, there's no such a way, please see the details above. You should manually free the space up to let the job finish successfully.

Seems like I'm not the only one with this issue as the thread was merged. What is the proper procedure to get this on the "wishlist"? I would just like to see a tickbox that would tell it to delete previous backups BEFORE it starts doing a backup. That makes more sense when your always running at 90% capacity on the repositories.

[Vitaliy S.]

To address problems with repository free space management, I would recommend using Veeam ONE predefined report - Capacity Planning for backup repositories. Certainly, it can be in a wishlist, but deleting backups manually (overriding your defined retention policy) cannot be considered as best practice. Thanks for the feedback!

[foggy]

Also, in case you do not have Veeam ONE, there are built-in Veeam B&R space notifications to track free space on the repository.

[lp@albersdruck.de]

I second the wish to be able to use Veeam to delete a number of restore points; editing a job, changing retention policy, run job, wait for restore points to be removed, edit job again to restore retention policy ... I am lazy and this is error-prone

Yes I know, you should provision enough space for the repository and plan ahead, but bad und unforeseen things do happen.

A checkbox in a job for "remove restore points according to retention policy at start of job" would be nice as well. Of course with a warning sign that activating that option can produce catastrophic results when the job fails repeatedly. Or make it depending on the last run being successful?

[Vitaliy S.]

Or make it depending on the last run being successful?

This is how it works right now retention is applied right after your job completes. Thanks for the feedback anyway!

[rswanson]

If you're changing the restore points from say... 12 to 6, chances are that you are like the rest of folks on this post and have plumb run out of disk space. And you have no more disk to add 'cuz you're trying to remove backups (last resort).

Having retention policy applied at the end of a successful job is a good thing. And successful jobs should apply the retention policy and remove extraneous backups only after a successful job (tough to determine if a job will be successful before it runs).

So, we know:
a) how to change the retention policy (number of restore points) by editing a job
b) how to delete extraneous backups to match the retention policy after a job completes successfully

I don't understand what is keeping you (Veeam) from using the knowledge in "a" and "b" above to
c) delete extraneous backups to match the retention policy when the retention policy changes. Oh my god... you could even put a check box there to make sure you want to delete the extraneous backups.

My son is a physicist. He talks rocket science. This doesn't sound anything like what he talks about... thus I recon it ain't rocket science.

[Doug.Butler]

Sorry to bump this old topic (6 months), and sorry also to change the topic slightly, but I'd like to know more about the "space notifications". My jobs send me e-mail when they fail for any reason (including lack of space), but are you referring to something else that proactively monitors space on the repository?

[foggy]

Space notifications settings are available in the main Veeam B&R options dialog.

[Vitaliy S.]

My jobs send me e-mail when they fail for any reason (including lack of space), but are you referring to something else that proactively monitors space on the repository?

You can also use Veeam ONE (part of Availability Suite) to not only monitor free space on the repository, but also use capacity planning capabilities to predict the date when your storage will run out of space.

[JayP819]

I'm using the latest version of Veeam Backup & Replication.
I would like to know if there is a way to automatically delete the eldest backups when a repository becomes full.
Currently I found how to delete backups after a certain number of them have been made, but I'm really looking for only when the repository (external hard drive) is full. Is that possible?

[wishr]

Hi Jay,

Currently, you can only operate the retention settings (retention is applied after the end of a successful job session). I'm merging your question with an existing thread - please take a look.

Thanks