Broken Backup Copy Jobs Chains and Deleting Copy Files

[inayama]

Hello,

Our Customer Success Engineer asked us to post this in the forum.

We have a recurring issue where the chain of Copy Jobs get broken and new one starts. Which is fine, except that I have to either delete the files from B&R console (if I'm lucky) or I have to manually delete the older copy files. I would like to know how I can avoid this.

I opened a new case. Case # 04650081

Thank you
Tadashi

[inayama]

I also had a similar issue where I simply started an Active Full, but there was no satifactory root cause analysis.

Case #04232222

Thank you,
Tadashi

[inayama]

Hello. Here is an update from the Support Engineer regarding case Case #04650081.

My next step would be to request a customer enhancement request to either avoid orphaned backup chains or have some automated backup file removal process.

Thank you,
Tadashi

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Tadashi,

If something occurs to orphan the previous backup chain, unfortunately there is nothing that can be done other than manual removal. If those backups are not associated with the present backup set, they will never have retention applied to them. The screenshot does in fact show that there are two separate chains for multiple servers, so something occurred that resulted in the previous chain being orphaned from the current set. This most often happens with job configuration changes, host or datastore migrations, or other actions that may result in a change in the job or VM reference ID. The retention will never apply to the older chain as the newer chain is being seen by Veeam as a completely separate instance, therefore the old chain has not yet reached retention; as explained above, the only solution would be manual removal. Please let us know if there are any further questions that we might be able to help address. Thank you!

Eric Moyer
Veeam Support

[Natalia Lupacheva]

Hi Tadashi,

Sorry for the late response.
Just in case - you see these orphaned backups with Home > Backups > Disk node, right?
If you see them, does deletion from BR help?

If you are looking for a way to find all orphaned backups which are not shown in VBR anymore, maybe ps could help.

So may I ask you to share more details on what kind of automation you are looking for?

Thanks!

[inayama]

Hello Natalia,

Yes, that process works. But we don't want to be manually removing these files on regular bases.

Other times, we'll notice that the chain keeps continuing so we have to perform an Active Full to start a new chain. Then remove the backup files manually later.

I'm not sure what kind of automation I'm looking for. I just don't want to continue to remove these backup file manually. So it could even be something like better resiliency on the backup chains so they don't keep breaking. In the end, we want to avoid any manual intervention.

Let me know if you have any other question.

Thank you,
Tadashi

[PetrM]

Hello,

The automatic deletion of obsolete backup files is the duty of retention policy and this is the most reliable way so far. If the retention policy does not delete files from the backup chain because it's no longer available by some reason, then we should look for this exact reason. Perhaps, it would make sense to ask our engineers to explain what makes a backup chain to become "orphaned" and why it happens regularly.

Thanks!