Feature Request - Allow backup job with no clients

[cb1ocker]

Right now you can't have a backup job with no clients in it. This has become an issue a few times this month as I'm decommissioning servers that happen to be the last or only server in a particular job. In my case, I keep restore points going back for 30 days, and I'd like to keep the backups of these decommissioned servers until they expire. I can't remove the server from the job because it's the only one in it, so my only option with these seems to be to disable the job so it doesn't keep trying to run every night. Unfortunately the old backups of disabled jobs aren't cleaned up automatically, so I find myself setting a calendar reminder to manually delete the job and the restore points contained in it after my retention period expires. If I could remove the last server from a job, but leave the job enabled so it automatically cleans up old backups, it would solve my problem.

Alternatively, am I just missing a more effective way to manage this that perhaps already exists?

[veremin]

You can add some VM that will still be present in your environment for the next 30 days, exclude all its disks from processing, so, basically nothing is backed up, and let the job exist for the next month and successfully remove old restore points. Thanks!

[cb1ocker]

Thanks v.eremin, that's definitely easier than what I'm currently doing to make sure the restore points automatically get cleaned up, but I'll still need to remember to clean up that placeholder VM at some point. Ideally it would be great to have a way to manage this that doesn't require remembering to come back and manually make a change 30 days later.

[veremin]

Potentially you can write a tiny script that will remove obsolete restore points and set it to be executed next month or so (30 days from current date).

Anyway, thank you for your request; appreciated!

[jamessmith82!]

This is where vCenter tags are handy as well as you just remove the tags from the VMs and the job remains active and rolls over as per normal

[gummett]

You can have a job that just contains an empty folder or datastore.
This is also useful for creating job templates.

[ChrisGundry]

+1 for this feature. I have this requirement as well and it would be nice to allow Veeam to continue to handle retention for VMs that no longer exist, without having to 'trick it' by adding a VM and excluding it or something.

[odruard]

Hello,

Indeed you cannot remove the last object in backup job using the console.
However you can do it using powershell.

To remove one VM, folder or other object :

Code: Select all

Get-VBRJob -Name [JobName] | Get-VBRJobObject -Name [ObjectName] | Remove-VBRJobObject

To remove all remaining objects :

Code: Select all

Get-VBRJob -Name [JobName] | Get-VBRJobObject | Remove-VBRJobObject

Olivier

[c.schulzejn]

+1
I would like to have that feature too.