Help in backup policy calculation

[MSTop]

Hello there,

we bought a Enterprise Plus Edition for our backup company infrastructure. I'm assigned to build backup policy for windows computer users, there i have problem to do set it properly in Agent Backup Jobs. I would to have answer for some questions.

We have to store backup for last week( 5 days ) for every user. Which backup type its designed for it?

Are the backup change policy affected to old restore points?

Thank you.

[Egor Yakovlev]

Greeting!
- Are those windows computers stationary in the office(use Veeam Agent job "Managed by Server") or roaming laptops that might disappear from the network(use Veeam Agent job "Managed by Agent")
- On Storage tab, you should define Retention Policy: 5 points. On schedule tab: Run Daily | On weekdays.
- Yes, if you have 30 restore points right now, upon next backup run with new policy settings new retention(5?) will apply and older backups will get automatically cleared out.
/Thanks!

[MSTop]

Hi, Egor Yakovlev

Well, i created a backup job with 5 points (day) retention managed by agent, I noticed that veeam agent don't delete old restore points, as i understood they should be deleted below yellow line( picture) ??

Synthetic backup is created to be running every monday.

[Egor Yakovlev]

Yup, sounds right. Can you please export me logs for that agent job and send a link in private message?
/Thanks!

[Egor Yakovlev]

Thanks for the logs.
I can see Retention is set to "7 days" (<RetainDaysToKeep>7</RetainDaysToKeep>, [04.05.2020 01:30:03] <01> Info Retention days: 7) which makes it to the yellow line increment. Let's see if tomorrow's backup will make it apply retention?
/Cheers!

[MSTop]

Hi, backups has not been deleted in tonight backup job, also I created a other job with 3 day retention and synthethic backup every monday problem is similiar

[Egor Yakovlev]

Great. I will need fresh agent-side logs. Sent you a PM.
/Thanks!

[MSTop]

Hi Egor,

i got good news after tonight backup job, restore points which was marked by me in the picutre has been deleted. The question is how it relates to the removal policy settings?

[Egor Yakovlev]

Great news, MStop!
Well, it relates directly to the settings of the job - with Retention Policy set to 7, it is mandatory to have 7 restore points on disk - so if on 05\04 Veeam would have deleted oldest (04\20) VBK full backup file, that would leave next x4 VIB increments useless as they are related to Full backup blocks. That case would leave you with x6 valid restore points (04\27 and up) breaking the Retention Policy(7) rule - so product kept old restore points to be compliant while we generate new chain. Great animation of the retention process can be found here.
/Cheers!

[MSTop]

The problem is I have set it to 5 as i said in #2 post. The problem is similiar in backup job where I set 3 days retention from 20/04 there is 12 restore point now!

[Egor Yakovlev]

Agent policy log clearly says <RetainCycles>7</RetainCycles> as if your new policy settings weren't Applied to the agent. Please, double check if policy was applied.
As for 2nd agent job, let's check it as well - there might have been Policy: 30, and a new policy of 3 wasn't applied?
/Thanks!

[MSTop]

Yes, right all agents have 7 points retention, there is problem with update policy from server to agent, when i change just days amount log says:

2020-05-06 12:17:12 PM :: Configuration update for PC is not required: backup policy was not modified

But when disabled 'Backup cache' option it went normal

2020-05-06 12:18:37 PM :: Backup job configuration has been applied at 5/6/2020 12:18:37 PM

Also in agent logs there is still

<RetentionInfo RestorePointsCount="7" /> Endpoint\!Configuration\LastRemoteConfig.xml

What's wrong ?

[Egor Yakovlev]

Hi MSTop,
Thanks for your logs QA confirmed a bug. It will be fixed in one of the following builds, and until then, as a workaround, please change any other setting(rather than only retention) in the Workstation policy for it to be applied successfully.
Thanks!

[MSTop]

Hi Egor,

the retention is still 7 nevermind what i select to, its seems like the value are just ignored in policy applying.

[Egor Yakovlev]

Investigating. Stay tuned.
/Thanks!

[Dima P.]

Hello MSTop,

Thank you for your post! We've confirmed this glitch with our QA folks, please raise a support case in order to request a private fix. Cheers!

[Egor Yakovlev]

As of today, fix for the retention issue is included into v10 Cumulative Patch 2.
/Cheers!