Retention settings for Scale-Out Repositories

[LEWISF]

Sorry for a stupid question but we have Veeam 11. We backup to an on premises NAS and then when the backups are completed, they are offloaded to a scale-out repo with a cloud provider. What I am trying to figure out is how long the VMs are retained with the cloud provider. They stated that the retention is set on the Veeam side, not their side. I've looked at the properties for the repository and I cannot find out how long VMs remain in our cloud repository. How do I find this out?

[Mildur]

Hello

Welcome to the forum.

The backup server retains the restore points in the capacity tier according to the retention period specified in your backup job or backup copy job.

Best,
Fabian

[LEWISF]

Fabian -

Thanks for the reply. Under the Storage section for one of my backup jobs, it's pointing to our NAS and cloud provider with a retention of 95 days. So on both targets, there will be 95 days worth of backups, correct?

TIA

[Mildur]

You're welcom.
There are two policies in the SOBR properties.

- If you only enable COPY, then both Tiers will retain 95 days of backups. With COPY, new restore points will be copied to the cloud provider (capacity tier) immediately.

- With MOVE enabled, then it depends on your configured operational restore window setting. Inactive backup chains will be moved from the NAS (performance tier) to the cloud provider (capacity tier) after they are out of the operational restore window. The capacity tier will keep offload restore points for the 95 days after the source job created the backup.

You can combine both policies, if you want to copy each restore point immediately and remove it from the NAS (performance tier) to save storage on the NAS device. If you want to save storage on the cloud provider (capacity tier), then you can use Archive Tier. Or make sure to update to V12 of Veeam Backup & Replication and use a backup copy job to Object Storage instead of a SOBR. The backup copy job can use a lower retention settings than the primary backup job.


Best,
Fabian