Retention period when Server is not 24x7

[xrated]

1. My B&R server at home is shutdown most of the time.
Will the option "Keep backups for: x days" still work if i only make incremental backups in that period?
Does it transform incremental to synthetic full by itself and when?

2. I found that some Settings like "Create synthetic full backups periodically" or "Perform backup files health check" cannot be run manually and do run only on specific days.
What happens if:
- those options are checked and the server is powered on after that time? Will it run those tasks delayed or skip them?
- backup server is shutdown during those tasks? (This can happen also on 24x7 server if its rebooted for maintenance)

[david.domask]

Hi xrated,

1. Retention runs as both part of jobs and also as a standalone service job, Background Retention. The server must be running in order for this to be applied, but you can also manually start Background Retention job, and it will check for backups that should have retention applied and perform it.

2. Synthetic Full (and Active Full) days are a schedule that tells the job "if today is the scheduled day, do an Active/Synthetic Full instead of an incremental backup". Thus if the server is not active on the scheduled days, these operations will not be performed. Health Check works the same way, but you can also perform scheduled backup integrity checks with SureBackup jobs

[xrated]

It looks like health checks are running 18:00 when scheduled, not sure.

Retention is started 00:30
https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backu ... ml?ver=120

Is it possible to manually start it by using:
https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backu ... ml?ver=120

[david.domask]

Correct, that cmdlet Apply-VBRIndependentRetention will start the background retention manually when run.

Health Check indeed has its own schedule to avoid long-running jobs and to give more control over when the HealthCheck works; the main idea is to allow you to set a schedule for the HealthCheck outside of normal backups to manage the workload on the repository (and mount server) better.

[xrated]

1. It looks like synthetic runs only once per day if defined in the job, is this correct?

2. Lets say retention period is set to 7days and there is one full backup 14days old, all other backups are incremental. Will the retention automatically create synethetic full backup in order to delete the 14days full? Or will the retention never kick in if there are no newer full backups?

[david.domask]

Hi!

1. Correct, see the Synthetic Full Backup section here from the User Guide, it explains the behavior more clearly.

2. This depends on your job configurations and if you use Day or Point based retention. Retention itself has no influence on Synthetic Fulls, these are two separate processes. So I would give a read on the retention scenarios, as retention will only remove backups once the conditions described in the User Guide link above are met.

[xrated]

2. The conditions for retention are very clear.

The article says:
When the specified number is exceeded, the earliest restore points will be removed from the backup chain or merged with the next closest restore point.

So the retention job is executing an synthetic job in the case above?

[david.domask]

Not quite, merging is discussing Forever Forward Retention. Basically, depending on the retention policy, retention is handled a bit differently, but merging refers to taking the oldest increment and merging it into the next closest restore point.

Synthetic Fulls transform the previous increment and chain into a Full backup, and this process is not related to retention in any way.

[xrated]

The apply-vbrindependentretention command doesnt seem to cleanup anything in old backups. I set retention period to 1day and tried also to modify the minimum retention store points from 3 to 1 with registry (not sure whats the correct name, because there is no official data available).

[david.domask]

Are you using Day-based retention? Day-based retention will retain a minimum number of restore points as noted in the User Guide (3 by default, adjustable with registry value).

[xrated]

In community i can only specify days and i dont know how the registry value is called for less then 3 generations.
However it should delete already something because there are more than 3 restore points available, even if only full backups are counting as restore point. Retention is set to only 1 day.

Right now i am having 5 full and 10 incremental backups. Why is it not deleting?

[Gostev]

This has to be some environment-specific problem as there are no know issues like that with the product. Therefore please open a support case for further troubleshooting. Thanks

[xrated]

I just run a scheduled job for this server and there are now 3x .vkb files as expected. I guess this is a bug causing retention never be effective when jobs are not scheduled, but rather started manually.
Is this a limitation of workstation type jobs?

Is it possible to get that registry key for setting min restore points without contacting support?

[Gostev]

Retention is always be processed at the end of a backup job, regardless if you run the job manually or if it run automatically on schedule. It's a single code that does not differentiate or track how exactly the job was started.

No, it's not possible for registry keys that are not recommended for implementation by customers due to significant recovery risks their improper usage is associated with.

[xrated]

Therefore please open a support case for further troubleshooting. Thanks

Tried this but obviously nobody has time at the moment.
That registry key really would help me to understand whats going on in retention.

[xrated]

It looks like Workstation mode is not honoring retention or in a different way.

[veremin]

That’s not true. Regardless of the job type, they always follow the specified retention settings. It would be strange if, for just one job type, we didn’t support the settings that a user can configure for that job.

At this point, it seems that we’ve exhausted our ability to troubleshoot your issue via the forum, so please try reaching out to support again after some time. Perhaps this time they’ll be able to look into cases opened for the free version of the product.

Thanks!

[xrated]

No Problem, i did not expect any support for free product

I reconfigured job as type server and now i am able to select 1 generation in job and after each backup there is only 1 restore point. Thats exactly what i need.

In workstation mode i was only able to select days for retention and it was keeping way to many restore points. I had impression it did not delete any generation until i scheduled a job.

For sure i have a rather unusual setup, when there are only manual backups with so less restore points. But its just a OS image without data.