Delete VM but continue retention policy

[steamingPeople]

Hey everyone,

I've searched quite a bit before posting, and I know this is a common topic, but I'm still a bit confused and hoping for some clarification. I previously asked something similar but ended up more uncertain, so I’d really appreciate some guidance.

My question is: How can we delete a VM, remove it from a job, or move it to another host (requiring it to be re-added to the job since VBR no longer recognizes it as the same VM). but ensure the existing backup files continue to be processed by the original short term retention policies? Specifically, we don't want all backups to suddenly be deleted (which is how deleted item retention works) but neither do we want the backups to stay indefinitely, we just need the backup chains to continue to slowly fall out of retention.

Our use case is most needed when we move a VM to a another HyperV host for which in Veeams eyes it's a new VM so a new chain gets created, but we need the old chain short term retention since this VM is actually a live VM.

I understand we can set the deleted items retention to same duration as the short term retention, but that will wasting precious space since all backups will be retained instead of just the needed chains.

Any insights or best practices would be greatly appreciated! Thanks in advance!

[david.domask]

Hi steamingPeople,

It sounds like you're looking for Background Retention, which applies retention to backups no longer associated with a job (Orphaned backups).

So in general once a job is no longer needed, simply delete the job and backups attached to it will be moved to an Orpahned node in the Backups section of the console.

Such backups can be moved with Backup Move if required.

[veremin]

Alternatively, you can simply detach the machine backup from the job and let it be retained according to the background retention process. Thanks!

[steamingPeople]

Sorry I somehow missed these responses.

Both of these solutions address removing a complete job. We want to keep the job running since we have other VMs in the job. We want to remove some VMs from a job but leave the job as is.

[david.domask]

Hi steamingPeople,

You can use Backup Move to move the selected machines to a "dummy" job, and simply delete the dummy job. This is fast way to detach an individual workload and move it to Orphaned nodes.

[steamingPeople]

This is a workable solution. Although I wish Veeam would natively support orphaned backups just like it detects orphaned jobs.