Version 13 - restore point retension policy

[micy]

Hi,
I decided to upgrade to version 13, and at the outset, I was shocked to learn that it is not possible to select a retention policy based on the number of restore points, but only on the number of days. This is a very significant change. How can I create a job to back up a development server and keep the incremental backups forever so that I can return to any restore point at any time? And if I forget the number of days I selected for the new job and run it after a long time, I will lose all backups older than the selected number of days. Would it be possible to bring back the option to select the number of restore points or the number of days? Please!!!
Thanks.
Milan

[Gostev]

Hi, no it's not possible to bring back restore point-based retention.

However, you will never "lose all backups", that's not how our product works. We always keep the last 3 restore points, even if their time-based retention expires.

For long-term retention, you're supposed to use a GFS retention schedule. This can span decades if that's something you require.

Thanks

[micy]

Thanks for you answer.
I have never used a time retention policy. Only once, and that was by mistake, because when creating a new job in version 12, the time policy is offered by default.
I didn't know that there are 3 restore points left in the time policy.
It's the same for backup copy jobs in version 13? Is there only a time policy there too? I use the number of restore points here as well.
Thanks.
Milan

[Gostev]

Correct.

[RichardP63]

Removing this option has a serious impact on our customers' data backups. We can no longer tell how many restore points are available on a disk.
The backup hard drives are replaced daily, and a disk may not be reconnected for one or two weeks.
V12 will be supported until February 2027 – we will stick with V12 until then and then decide whether to switch to V13 or another product.

We have seen that there is some kind of workaround
https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/vbr/u ... tml?ver=13
Here is said:
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 in the in the configuration file on the Linux-based backup server or with a registry value on the Microsoft Windows-based backup server. For more information, contact Veeam Customer Support.

This is not really helpful, not possible to adjust number of restore points according to disk size.

We would be really interested to know why this feature is no longer supported. Did it cost Veeam so much?
@Veeam: Please reconsider dropping the restore points based retention option

[Gostev]

3 is just the default, it's in fact possible to adjust via a registry value.

For the reasons for dropping please refer to the existing topics where this was discussed in the greatest of details over the course of last year.