[FEATURE REQUEST] Desaster-MODE - Disable Backup retention temporary

[arogarth]

Hi,
we had some desaster two weeks ago and started to restore a lot of vms since.
We also started Backups.
Now we have the Problem - that Backups removed from storage because theire retention is outdated.

Now a "Desaster-Mode" or something else would be nice. A option which will do Backups but do not do not remove old backup which retention is outdated...

As Managed Service Provider and Managed Backup our customer can choose theire retetion by themselve. And some has choose 7d retention. So the VMs will be removed after the retention. But not all VMs are restored until this point but the Backup Jobs has to run again.

Best regards,
/ARO

[Mildur]

Hi Arogarth

The backup server should keep at least the last three restore points. Did you saw another behavior?
Short-Term Retention Policy

The minimum number of retained restore points is 3. This number does not depend on the number of days set in the retention policy. For example, the retention policy is set to 5 days. You launch the job after it was stopped for 10 days. Normally, Veeam Backup & Replication will delete all previous restore points. However, due to the minimum number of retained restore points, you will still have at least 3 restore points: the newly created restore point and the two previous ones.
You can change the minimum number of retained restore points with a registry value. For more information, contact Veeam Customer Support.

Best,
Fabian

[arogarth]

Hi,
no - for example, we had massive problem some month ago and backup retention was 30days.
After that, customers asks if we can keep backups for longer that 30days temporary.
My Workaround was to inkrease all Retentions to 99days - A option to disable retention temporary would be nice here.

Best regards,
/ARO

[Mildur]

Hi Arogarth

Thank you for coming back to this topic. We count your request as +1.

Background retention can be disabled starting with v12.1. But this only helps if backup jobs are disabled and do not run:
https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backu ... ml?ver=120

Retention in running backup jobs is still applied after the backup session.

Best,
Fabian

[tyler.jurgens]

While this would be more work than a simple button that stops retention points from being removed, you can handle it like you did with your workaround. Increase the retention policy on all jobs to meet the new desired retention (99 days, or whatever you like). Once the crisis is mitigated, drop the retention policy back down to where you want it to be and all the old restore points will get cleaned up.

Not sure a single button is a great way to solve this issue - what retention policy is good enough in a disaster? Stop restore point cleanup entirely? If so, what happens when the repository runs out of space and now you can't get new backups? Seems a bit problematic rather than performing the workaround you did, where you specifically handle the retention policy as you see fit.