Repo Item-level Retention and cleanup

[agrob]

Good Day

At first, all the Best for 2025 to anyone

I have a VBM365 Version 8 (latest patches) installation on an on Prem Server with two configured Repos

Volume E -> Repo_001 -> 2 Years Retention (Item-level retention) -> Used for one Backup Job with Mailbox Items
Volume F -> Repo_010 -> 3 Years Retention (Item-level retention) -> Used for one Backup Job SPO/Teams Items

If i check the Folder/Files on those volumes, it looks like this:

E:\
2023
2024
2025

F:\
2021
2022
2023
2024
2025
...

For Volume E, it looks fine, Backups older than 2 Years (Folder 2022 for example) was removed by start of January
For Volume F, i would expect that Folder 2021 would also be removed, but it is not (as we have 3 Years Item level retention i would expect only folder 2022,2023,2024,2025 and newer on the Volume).
In folder 2021, the edb file is arround 5TB and Diskspace is getting low on free space so i would have the folder 2021 and all its content to be deleted.

As far is i understand, if i use item level retention, only files newer than 3 Years (modified or created date at the source) should be protected in the Repo. That means, older files (older than 3 years) from the source would not be backed up by the SPO/Teams job.
-> Is there any way that the 2021 Folder and contents are getting removed?
-> what would happen if i just delete the folder? would there be any inconsistency with the VBM365 Database? Would the next run of the backup job backup create the folder / data again if needed?

I already tried to defrag with esentutl but this is very slow and would take several days (even if source and destination are on different raid arrays) and as the Veeam Service has to be offline, no backup jobs would run during those days which is not really an opinion...

Thanks for any help
Best Regards

[Mildur]

Hi Andre,

When all protected items are deleted according to the retention policy, the database files will be automatically removed. If you still see these database files, it either means there are still items that need to be retained according to the policy, or there might be an issue with the retention process.

I suggest contacting our customer support team to ensure that the retention process is functioning as expected.

Best,
Fabian

[agrob]

Hi Fabian

Thanks. I already have contact to the Support and they told me everything is working correct. But this does not help much as i have a space issue.
Is there any way to check how many data is still under protection and when it will be removed?

Thanks

[Mildur]

I found your case number.
The statement from your support engineer is correct for "snapshot level retention", but not for "item level retention". I assume he missed that information from your first mail. And I also don't understand how a "eseutils defragmentation" helps in applying the retention. Let me discuss the case with our support team.

One thing you can try to check for protected items in the database:

1.) Stop the service "Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 Proxy Service"
2.) Open Veeam Explorer for SharePoint (or Teams) and add your database from the year 2021 or 2022
3.) Choose "No" to only open the database from the selected year


That may give you an idea if there are still protected items in the database or not.

Best,
Fabian

[agrob]

Hi Fabian

Thanks for your reply.
I wanted to open the DB from 2021 with Veeam Explorer. But it seems that the cleanup did remove the 2021 Folder now over the weekend.... So it seems that i was just a bit too impatient...

Anyway, thanks for your help.
Best Regards
André

[Mildur]

Hi André

Thanks for the update. I‘m glad it worked as expected.
I assume your retention processing (setting in your repository properties) is configured to be applied once per week?

Best,
Fabian

[agrob]

Hi Fabian

No it is set to run every day at 11pm...

Best Regards
André