Snapshot Retention

[mbmac]

Not sure if others have come across this but wanted to point out that snapshots taken by Veeam do not apply their retention settings correctly.

In our case we are backing up a nutanix VM directly to S3 by means of our Veeam AHV Proxy. Jobs are set in Veeam to apply a 30 day retention. When the snapshot gets taken inside of Nutanix the default setting is 60 days. The result is that the retention gets set at 60 days on the S3 side because the retention is inherited by the Nutanix configuration and it seems to ignore the Veeam setting.

Case #07688768 was opened without much info.

Nutanix is currently modifying a gflag against all of our clusters to change the default retention to match our Veeam Setting.

For those who are backing up to object storage you may want to make sure your retention settings are set correctly.

Seems there is a disconnect between Veeam and Nutanix on their API to allow Veeam to dictate the actual retention setting.

Hope this helps someone else.

[mbmac]

Just an update. Nutanix is suggesting this should be set via Veeam so they have asked Veeam to look further on this issue. They are happy to get on a call if needed.

[ronnmartin61]

@mbmac when we run our 3rd party backup snapshots we do not specify a retention period. Nutanix' default is 30 days however I know this can be changed so regardless of your backup job retention setting the snapshot will get your Nutanix default whatever that happens to be.
Your S3 retention should not be affected in any way by the Nutanix snapshot lifespan and if it is then that may be a bug.

[ronnmartin61]

@mbmac just don't want to overlook the basics here. You are running an active or synthetic full backup at some point with your job so we can "seal" chains so that older backup points can be deleted correct?

[mbmac]

backups to S3 with AHV/Veeam are forever forward incremental. The very first restore point in our chain gets flagged as 60 days retention. It shows you in the nutanix UI under the snapshot that Veeam takes. When I try to delete a backup job from S3 it says it is immutable for 60 days where our bucket is 30 days and our retention in Veeam is set for 30 days. This should be proven out in the lab of your engineering team.

[ronnmartin61]

Again the 60 days should be purely coincidental as snapshot retention and backup point retention are two completely independent entities/operations. Please continue to work with support to resolve

[mbmac]

I believe we have hit a bug then, because I can 100% prove this to be the case. I have asked in the case for them to escalate.

@mbmac when we run our 3rd party backup snapshots we do not specify a retention period. Nutanix' default is 30 days however I know this can be changed so regardless of your backup job retention setting the snapshot will get your Nutanix default whatever that happens to be.
Your S3 retention should not be affected in any way by the Nutanix snapshot lifespan and if it is then that may be a bug.

[mbmac]

Just wanted to post an update that I believe I have found the culprit. Deep within the documentation of our S3 provider they reference this piece of information. https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backu ... ml?ver=120

[HannesK]

Hello,
yes, when I read "immutable", I was confident that it has to do with block generation and checkpoints. We plan improvements on space consumption in V13.

Best regards
Hannes