Backup retention question

[HannesK]

Hello,
1 restore point / day retention should do the job.

As you configured "weekly full" on Monday, it will wait until next Monday to delete everything older than 1 day.

Best regards,
Hannes

[ArthurDaley]

Hi,

I'd like to keep Monday full backup and then 4 incremental backups and all of that for two weeks running, how can I go about this?

Thanks,

[HannesK]

Hi,
that's a completely different question... please check out in the user guide how "forward incremental with synthetic / active full" backup works. I guess what you are asking for is 10 days retention (question not 100% clear to me). Please note that dependent backup files cannot be deleted until retention is over.

https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/agent ... tml?ver=40
https://www.veeam.com/kb1932
https://rps.dewin.me/ -> take "incremental weekly active full" -> set your retention -> check the "manual run" box and simulate step by step.

Best regards,
Hannes

[ArthurDaley]

Hi Hannes,

I am using the free version, I understand that that does not support "forward incremental" but only "Active Full"?

What I mean is to have always this structure:
Monday Full1
Tuesday Inc1
Wedn Inc1
Thurs Inc1
Fri Inc1
Monday Full2
Tuesday Inc2
Wedn Inc2
Thurs Inc2
Fri Inc2

Everything older than that is to be deleted on the respective next monday.
Do you get my drift?

I tried it with Active Full and a retention time of 10 days because it seemed logical but it never deleted anything. I have set the retention time now to 2 to see what happens.
But I really dont get how the logic behind this works...we had Acronis before and there you can simply set the number of backup sets to be kept.

[HannesK]

Hi

I understand that that does not support "forward incremental" but only "Active Full"?

I guess that's a misunderstanding of how backup modes are called. please check the links I posted earlier and compare with the UI.

I also run free edition. Active full is not enabled per default

The point is "Monday Full3". Please check the links I posted. On Monday Full3 we cannot delete Monday Full1 because that would break Tuesday1-Friday1. And that would violate "10 days" retention. The original question is a different scenario.

As long as you don't configure "active full", everything is easy. It will keep exactly the amount of days you require.

Best reagrds,
Hannes

[okv]

Hi

I guess that's a misunderstanding of how backup modes are called. please check the links I posted earlier and compare with the UI.

I also run free edition. Active full is not enabled per default

The point is "Monday Full3". Please check the links I posted. On Monday Full3 we cannot delete Monday Full1 because that would break Tuesday1-Friday1. And that would violate "10 days" retention. The original question is a different scenario.

As long as you don't configure "active full", everything is easy. It will keep exactly the amount of days you require.

Best reagrds,
Hannes

Could you (or someone) please explain once more how this is supposed to work?

I created a full volume backup on February 2018 with subsequent weekly incremental backups. Retention was 180 days. I recently discovered that I have 110 VIB files, one per week since February 2018. I discovered that this actually means 180x7=1260 days of retention!

I changed retention to 60 days and ran a new active full backup, which I thought would delete 60 VIB files. However, no VIB files have been deleted. I changed retention to 12 days and ran a new incremental backup, but I still have 111 VIB files and two full backup files, the oldest from February 2018.

Why doesn't the software delete the VIB files? Thank you for any explanation.

[HannesK]

Hello,
if you run backup only once a week, that behavior is expected. See https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/agent ... tml?ver=40

Why doesn't the software delete the VIB files?

Because of the active full. It cannot remove old VIBs and VBK. Incremental backups rely on each other. It cannot delete things as long es they are still required to ensure that you can restore the time configured.

If you would not have done the additional active full, then it would have merged the incrementals into the full backup (see the animations I posted earlier https://www.veeam.com/kb1932 <- forward incremental forever)

Best regards,
Hannes