Retention policy with new object storage options

[johnsmith]

The new direct-to-object-storage features in Agent for Windows (v6) is fantastic. But, I am trying to figure out the appropriate retention policy and I am not sure it is possible.

I want a new full backup every 30 days with daily incrementals in between. However, I only want to retain one full/incremental chain at a time, so delete the prior full/incremental chain when a new full/incremental chain is created.

I know the Agent has a feature to create a new full backup once a month. I also know I can pick N number of days or restore points for the retention policy, plus there is an option to retain full backups outside of the retention policy.

Let's say I enable the new full backup once a month. Great, that is one part of the solution. The problem is, the retention policy does not appear to be able to be synced with creating that full backup once a month.

For example, if I set the retention policy to 30 days, then every day Veeam will be merging the obsolete incremental (the one that falls out of the 30 day window) into the full backup to create the synthetic full, effectively reuploading/changing the full backup file daily on the object storage. Even if egress costs are not an issue, that just is not viable for object storage.

Same issue if I set the retention policy by number of restore points rather than days.

Is there no way to tell the Agent to keep one full/incremental chain at a time, such that no synthetics are created in between monthly full backups?

[HannesK]

Hello,
on object storage there is only one full (except if you run active full. But you don't want that as far as I see). Anything else (monthly GFS in your case) is spaceless.

effectively reuploading/changing the full backup file daily on the object storage

no

Best regards,
Hannes

[johnsmith]

Hannes, thanks for clarifying. But I am confused on how retention policies work for object storage.

Let's say I set the retention policy to 5 restore points. I then run a daily backup. At the end of day 5, I will have this:

(1) First restore point - full backup
(2) Second restore point - incremental backup
(3) Third restore point - incremental backup
(4) Fourth restore point - incremental backup
(5) Fifth restore point - incremental backup

What happens on day six? I thought what happens is that (1) and (2) are merged together into a synthetic full backup; (3), (4), and (5) are left alone; and a new incremental restore point is created.

Is that not how it works?

[johnsmith]

I read the short-term retention policy at https://www.veeam.com/veeam_agent_windo ... ide_pg.pdf (on pg.38) and it seems to work exactly as I describe above. Am I wrong?

[HannesK]

What happens on day six?

unnecessary data is removed plus some metadata operations. One can say that this is "merging", because we always used that term (the log output actually also says that, yes). In reality, it just removes the unnecessary objects. The user guide describes it for backup files. In object storage, there are many objects,

Which problem do you try to solve?

[johnsmith]

Hannes, oh I see. So in object storage there isn't a single full backup file that is regularly changed. Rather, the objects are deleted as needed by the retention policy

The problem I am trying to solve is straightforward. I want to have a continuous full/incremental chain stored in my block storage. When a new full backup is created, say monthly, then I want the prior full/incremental chain to be deleted. I think I can accomplish this using two settings in the Agent:

(1) Enable retention policy to 30 days
(2) Create active full backups once a month (say, last Friday of the month)

My only concern was with (1): as a restore point "expires" past the retention policy, how it was being dealt with. I was thinking it would work like local backup - the incremental restore point would be "merged" into the full backup file. But for cloud storage, that would mean the full backup file is being changed daily (if daily backups are being run), since every day a new restore point will expire past the retention policy. And if a full backup file is changed daily, that means it is being uploaded daily, which is not sustainable.

However, what you are saying is that for object storage there is not a full backup file, but rather objects that are kept / deleted / flagged as necessary. So, in essence, when a restore point "expires", there is no full backup file that is changed but rather objects are kept / deleted / flagged, so there is no reuploading the full backup file on a daily basis. I think this solves my concern. The documentation should be updated for object storage.

Thanks for your help.

[HannesK]

Thanks, I forwarded your feedback to our technical writers team.

[HannesK]

Hello,
I got answer from the technical writers team... the GFS information is available in a different section. The whole retention thing from classic storage is irrelevant for object storage.

https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/agent ... tml?ver=60

Best regards,
Hannes

[johnsmith]

Alright, to anyone wondering the solution to my issue. Veeam could make this a lot easier by being more flexible in their retention policy, but it IS possible to do what I requested by doing the following:

(1) Set the "Retention Policy" in the Agent to 1 restore point or 1 day
(2) Enable "Active full backup" to monthly and on the last day of the month (or whatever day you want)

What will happen now is that Veeam will keep the latest full backup + all of its incremental backups and delete all the older full backup/incremental chains.

It works like this. Every month a new full backup will be created and by the next day or next restore point (depending on your retention policy) Veeam will delete all the old full backups/incremental chains. This way, you are only keeping one full backup/incremental chain. This works because Veeam requires you to keep at least one full backup and it will not delete any full backup that still has an incremental backup within the retention policy, so even though technically the full backup and its incrementals will be out of the retention policy, Veeam won't delete them until the next full backup is created.

I have tested this. It works well.