apply retention policy manually

[mcz]

Hello everybody,

this story is quite simple: We copy/offload GFS's to our object storage. Now due to multiple issues in the past and the switch from a 'normal' bucket to an immutable one, we've got multiple backups and chains across multiple buckets, folders, etc. and so the deduplication across the multiple chains is not given. That's why we're wasting a lot of space and the problem is that we only could delete a whole chain but not restore points within the chain...

Sometimes you'd like to keep one certain restore point but get rid of all the others in the chain. Using 'traditional' backups on a file system would make this possible: delete the restore points you wanna get ride of and keep the vbk's you wannt to keep - rescan repo and done. I'd like to do the same on an object storage.

Is there a script/tool somewhere or via the support available which would do that for me in an officially supported way? It just doesn't help if I do mess around and break the whole chain by doing so...

Thanks!

[veremin]

I can only suggest exporting needed restore points and removing everything else. Current downside of this approach is the fact that points will be exported to original performance extent and you will need to upload them to object storage manually.

However, it will be addressed in v12 - points residing in capacity tier will be exported to capacity tier (instead of performance one).

Thanks!

[mcz]

Thanks Vladimir, got that. Will there ever be an option do to a manual cleanup or something similar? I mean the logic does exist: Everytime when the retention is applied, it would remove old objects - it's exactly what I wannt. No way to trigger that retention via powershell or anything like that?

[veremin]

Not planned for short-term roadmap If you want to remove obsolete objects, lowering retention period is a way to go.

[mcz]

yeah, but lowering retention period is not possible, if there's no linked job (orphaned backups on object storage)...

[veremin]

Simple retention cannot be applied outside of existing job, but for orphaned GFS restore points we have this background processing.

Either way your voice has been heard; so thank you for sharing your feedback with us, Michael.

[vtjim345]

I have this same pain point. orphaned buckets that i'm not sure how to age out gracefully without pulling back.