Retention Policy

[BEAIS]

We have a daily Backup to Disk job that runs. We are set to keep 90 restore points on the Disk. Each Friday we run a Disk to Tape job and lately it has been using more than the usual tapes. If I were to change the number of restore points from 90 to 60, would this lower the size of the data being backed up to Tape? If not, what can be done to do this?

Case # 00603935

[veremin]

Each Friday we run a Disk to Tape job and lately it has been using more than the usual tapes.

I can think of two potential causes. Either backup files that have grown recently or the retention period specified on media pool has expired and the tape job starts to copy the old restore points that are no longer present on tape mediums.

Thanks.

[BEAIS]

The retention period in the media pool is set only to 4 weeks, which is a much shorter time than when we would receive it from our Off-Site holder.

[BEAIS]

Here he solution:

You must start a new Backup Chain

If you go to Backups-> Disk, right-click on the disk backup job, then select "Remove from backups", it will remove the backup from the list in Veeam. This would not delete any of the existing disk backups; they just wouldn't be connected to the backup job. You would then go to Backup Infrastructure-> Backup Repositories, right-click on the repository where the disk backups are stored, then select Rescan; the disk backup should now show up under Backups-> Imported.

When you run the disk backup again, it will start over with a new full backup. The tape backup, in turn, will back up that full without worrying about the previous restore points.

[veremin]

Actually, I've never thought of deleting backups from console and, thus, making backup to tape job copy the latest full backup. Nice workaround, indeed. It seems that the whole process apart from importing part can be automated via Powershell. Let me know if you need any assistance with that.

Thanks.