Orphaned restore points removal

[ortec-RW]

Hi,

I've been breaking my brain the last couple of months on our repository used space. The numbers didn't add up. There's more data in the repository then there should be. I tracked it down to old restore points of VMs that are no longer being backed up.
I'll break it down into the simplest form.

We have a Backup Job with multiple VMs that are backed up every night. Lets say it keeps 8 restore points on the repo, so we have 7 to 8 days to go back too. Restore points that are older then those 8 days get removed automatically through retention.
But then we have a Copy job that takes a copy each week, and saves it seperately and keeps 5 weeks (roughly a month). Again, older 'weeks' get removed via retention. Same story with Monthly copy jobs. So far so good. Nothing fills up, and restore points are kept based on what we want, nothing more. As long as the VM object is part of the jobs.

The issue starts when I remove a VM from the jobs. Because the VM is no longer needed, or no longer needs to be backed up. Or if it's been replaced by another VM. From the regular daily job, the VM object is removed, and things just carry on. After 8 days, it will no longer be present in the repo. It's fallen out of retention. Which is what I would expect to happen.

On the copy job however something else happens. First, the job log warns you about a VM that is no longer part of the job. But worse is that the last succesfull backup and the previous ones (up to the retention length) are not removed from the repository. It doesn't 'fall out' of retention like on the regular backup job. You have to manually purge these restore points from the repo, per VM. This takes up a lot of work and I have not found a way to automize this. Unless I'm missing something.
The copy job is not like a regular job. It's aways running, waiting for new restore points to appear that need to be copied based on the policy. Also, it's using forever incremental. Could that be the reason these restore points don't get purged from the Repo ?

I can think of 1 reason you would want the VM restore point to remain in a repo, even if it's no longer being backed up and perhaps doesn't even exist anymore. Archival and legal reasons.

So what are my options here ? Manual extra cleanup work ? Or let Veeam do the work for me ?

Greetings,
Richard

[haslund]

Do you have the 'Deleted Items Retention' feature already enabled? Please see https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backu ... ml?ver=120 for details.

[ortec-RW]

Thanx, did not know about that option. This could work, although the setting is for the entire copy-job. For some VMs you might not want to purge old backups even if the object is no longer in the copy job. These VMs will have to have their own copy job without the purge enabled.

Thanx again !!!