Too many files retained in backup directory

[sagelike]

Hi there,

I've noticed with one of my Veeam B&R jobs that it appears to be retaining too many files for the backup configuration.

I have Retention set to 6 which is 1 full day of backups and there's 34 files in the directory. I've compared it to others where I have Retention set to 3 for 1.5 days of backup and there's only 8 files. I have it set to remove Deleted Items data after 7 days which is the same for all backups.

I'm pretty sure this is too many files and eventually it will clear most of them out but it's taking too long. As a result, the 8TB drive can fill up...and this is the only backup on this drive whereas I have 8 backups stored on the other 8TB drive, all with similar settings. The ESXi guest in question is larger than all the others but not that much larger.

Why is it retaining so many files for so long before clearing them?

Thanks,
G

[Regnor]

What backup method have you configured in the advanced storage settings of your backup job? And how is your job scheduled?

[sagelike]

Retention 6 restore points, incremental, create synthetic backup each Saturday, Remove Deleted Items after 7 days. Everything else is default.

Schedule is every 4 hours, with All hours permitted.

I wonder if I should reduce restore points to 4 or set remove Deleted Items after 5 days from 7. What are the implications of reducing Remove Deleted Items to X from 7?

I'd prefer to keep a full day of restore points though really, I can't see a situtation where I would need to go back a full day. This is mail server so restoring the most recent backup is the only possible need.

Thanks!
G

[sagelike]

Retention 6 restore points, incremental, create synthetic backup each Saturday, Remove Deleted Items after 7 days. Everything else is default.

Schedule is every 4 hours, with All hours permitted.

I wonder if I should reduce restore points to 4 or set remove Deleted Items after 5 days from 7. What are the implications of reducing Remove Deleted Items to X from 7?

I'd prefer to keep a full day of restore points though really, I can't see a situtation where I would need to go back a full day. This is mail server so restoring the most recent backup is the only possible need.

Thanks!
G

[Regnor]

There's your problem. In forward incremental mode Veeam needs to create a full backup to close the backup chain and apply the retention. In your case this means Veeam will cleanup the backup files after the Synthetic Full on Saturday.
If you want to have a retention of only 6 restore points then I would suggest to disable the full backups completely and go with forever forward incremental.
https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backu ... ml?ver=110

But keeping just one day of backups seems a bit low to me. Is this your only backup or do you have any further long term backups?

[sagelike]

I want to retain longer backups and I thought moving this backup to a separate 6TB disk by itself would allow me too but then I ran into this problem. I will implement your recommendation and then see how many retention points I can realistically keep.

On a side note, how many days of backups do you recommend?

I've wondered about this because technically, I will ever need to restore the most recent backup so why keep 2 or 3 days worth of backups but perhaps there is a another rationale for keeping more than 1 day?

Thanks, I appreciate the advice.

G

[Regnor]

It depends on the requirements of your business. Personally I wouldn't go below 14 days for the short term retention, as a high percentage of restores occurs during that time frame.
If your retention is too short, what happens of you need to restore files which were deleted more than a few days ago? Or you've had a malware infection or any system error which you didn't discover right away? Just as an example as there are more reasons to have a higher retention.