Comprehensive data protection for all workloads
Post Reply
babarc
Influencer
Posts: 11
Liked: never
Joined: Dec 07, 2011 4:41 pm
Contact:

How veeam delete old restore point?

Post by babarc »

Hello, last night the job return me an error: i haven't more space on the disk to storage the backup. After 4 automatic attemp magically lots of space were available and the job was successful.
I think veeam has deleted old restore point based on policy retention...
WHEN veeam delete old file? why i have 3 error and then, the same job witouh any manual intervention, was terminated successfully?
Thanks
foggy
Veeam Software
Posts: 21069
Liked: 2115 times
Joined: Jul 11, 2011 10:22 am
Full Name: Alexander Fogelson
Contact:

Re: How veeam delete old restore point?

Post by foggy » 1 person likes this post

The retention policy is applied at the end of each successful job run.

My guess is that the job failed on the active/synthetic full day due to insufficient space (along with 3 default retry attempts) but the next day incremental finished successfully (as full is not scheduled for that day) allowing the retention policy to clean up some space. Could this be the case?
liviu.tutuianu
Enthusiast
Posts: 40
Liked: never
Joined: Jul 09, 2012 8:17 am
Full Name: Liviu Tutuianu
Contact:

Re: How veeam delete old restore point?

Post by liviu.tutuianu »

Hello to all,

We have a similar problem. On one our branches, we have set 21 restore points for a job. After some cycles of 21 restore point, one day (because the data amount from those VM's grew from one day to another), we saw that we didn't have enough available space for another backup.

So, in this case, we needed to reduce the number of restore points to 18. What would be the best practice in this case: should we wait for the new replication job to complete using the new set value of restore points or we can delete manually some of the old restore points? If deleting manually is the solution, how should we choose the oldest restore points?
foggy
Veeam Software
Posts: 21069
Liked: 2115 times
Joined: Jul 11, 2011 10:22 am
Full Name: Alexander Fogelson
Contact:

Re: How veeam delete old restore point?

Post by foggy »

You can remove restore points manually, though they will still remain in the SQL configuration database as an available restore points (until flushed away by retention). If you are using reverse incremental backup mode, just delete the oldest vrb files by their modified date. For forward incrementals, you have to remove the oldest vbk along with all the corresponding vib files (so, possibly, the whole week of backups).
Jamie Pert
Enthusiast
Posts: 68
Liked: 2 times
Joined: Jun 14, 2012 10:56 am
Full Name: Jamie Pert
Location: twitter.com/jam1epert
Contact:

Re: How veeam delete old restore point?

Post by Jamie Pert »

It would be neat if Veeam could do this for you - right click on the backup and flush it from the repository and Veeam database. Obviously this would work for certain methods, not standard incremental. I always get a bit worried when manually deleting files
@jam1epert on Twitter
dellock6
Veeam Software
Posts: 6137
Liked: 1928 times
Joined: Jul 26, 2009 3:39 pm
Full Name: Luca Dell'Oca
Location: Varese, Italy
Contact:

Re: How veeam delete old restore point?

Post by dellock6 »

It's completely safe to delete old VRB files, since in reverse you always have the full one as the newest one.
I see anyway a problem in Veeam deleting old VRB files for two reasons:
- you are violating your own retention policy
- Veeam cannot know in advance how much space a new backup will occupy, so it will have to do it "on the fly" while backup is running. Not impossible, and maybe a good feature for the future. If you know you will violate your retention, you can choose to do so.
Luca Dell'Oca
Principal EMEA Cloud Architect @ Veeam Software

@dellock6
https://www.virtualtothecore.com/
vExpert 2011 -> 2022
Veeam VMCE #1
quangspk
Lurker
Posts: 1
Liked: never
Joined: Sep 23, 2012 11:03 am
Full Name: Quang
Contact:

[MERGED] how to delete restore point manually to reclaim spa

Post by quangspk »

Hi all,

I'm using Veeam B&R 6.

My disk is full now. I need to delete some restore point (the old backup) to reclaim my disk space. Help me pls!

Thanks all.
Ejdesgaard
Enthusiast
Posts: 43
Liked: 8 times
Joined: Aug 24, 2012 11:59 am
Contact:

[MERGED] Remove individual restore points

Post by Ejdesgaard »

Hi,

I just ran out of space and got a incomplete last backup and another backup 2 weeks ago. Both are .vbk files and I can't figure out how to remove them correctly.

B&R version: 6.0.0.153
Destination: SMB
Server: 2008R2
Tom.M
Lurker
Posts: 1
Liked: never
Joined: Nov 21, 2013 3:06 pm
Full Name: Tom Mueller
Contact:

[MERGED] Backup repository ran full ...

Post by Tom.M »

Hi,
we have configured a backup repository of 11TB, but I guess we configured to much restore points (10 each), so yesterday night the repository ran full, no more disk space.

How can I fix this? Is it just lowering the amount of restore points in each backup job to get again more diskspace?

Thanks in advance, regards
Tom
Vitaliy S.
VP, Product Management
Posts: 27055
Liked: 2710 times
Joined: Mar 30, 2009 9:13 am
Full Name: Vitaliy Safarov
Contact:

Re: How veeam delete old restore point?

Post by Vitaliy S. »

Yes, that's correct. Just apply new retention policy settings and run your jobs.
kjstech
Expert
Posts: 160
Liked: 16 times
Joined: Jan 17, 2014 4:12 pm
Full Name: Keith S
Contact:

[MERGED] Change retention policy to combat full backup repo?

Post by kjstech »

I have a backup repo (7.1TB) that is full. Two jobs failed because it has 0kb free space.

I changed my restore points in these jobs from 14 days to 8 days. Next time these jobs run, will they delete backups from day 9,10,11,12,13 and 14, therefore freeing up enough space for the job to run? Ideally this should work if it does that deletion BEFORE it tries to write (because of 0kb).
I am also moving a 133GB exchange ntbackup file off this repo to another, so that will give me a little breathing room.

Is there a way to run a job that doesn't backup but deletes all but maybe the last 3 or 4 restore points?
foggy
Veeam Software
Posts: 21069
Liked: 2115 times
Joined: Jul 11, 2011 10:22 am
Full Name: Alexander Fogelson
Contact:

Re: How veeam delete old restore point?

Post by foggy »

Keith, no, there's no such a way, please see the details above. You should manually free the space up to let the job finish successfully.
kjstech
Expert
Posts: 160
Liked: 16 times
Joined: Jan 17, 2014 4:12 pm
Full Name: Keith S
Contact:

Re: How veeam delete old restore point?

Post by kjstech »

foggy wrote:Keith, no, there's no such a way, please see the details above. You should manually free the space up to let the job finish successfully.
Seems like I'm not the only one with this issue as the thread was merged. What is the proper procedure to get this on the "wishlist"? I would just like to see a tickbox that would tell it to delete previous backups BEFORE it starts doing a backup. That makes more sense when your always running at 90% capacity on the repositories.
Vitaliy S.
VP, Product Management
Posts: 27055
Liked: 2710 times
Joined: Mar 30, 2009 9:13 am
Full Name: Vitaliy Safarov
Contact:

Re: How veeam delete old restore point?

Post by Vitaliy S. »

To address problems with repository free space management, I would recommend using Veeam ONE predefined report - Capacity Planning for backup repositories. Certainly, it can be in a wishlist, but deleting backups manually (overriding your defined retention policy) cannot be considered as best practice. Thanks for the feedback!
foggy
Veeam Software
Posts: 21069
Liked: 2115 times
Joined: Jul 11, 2011 10:22 am
Full Name: Alexander Fogelson
Contact:

Re: How veeam delete old restore point?

Post by foggy »

Also, in case you do not have Veeam ONE, there are built-in Veeam B&R space notifications to track free space on the repository.
lp@albersdruck.de
Enthusiast
Posts: 82
Liked: 33 times
Joined: Mar 25, 2013 7:37 pm
Full Name: Lars Pisanec
Contact:

Re: How veeam delete old restore point?

Post by lp@albersdruck.de »

I second the wish to be able to use Veeam to delete a number of restore points; editing a job, changing retention policy, run job, wait for restore points to be removed, edit job again to restore retention policy ... I am lazy and this is error-prone ;)

Yes I know, you should provision enough space for the repository and plan ahead, but bad und unforeseen things do happen.

A checkbox in a job for "remove restore points according to retention policy at start of job" would be nice as well. Of course with a warning sign that activating that option can produce catastrophic results when the job fails repeatedly. Or make it depending on the last run being successful?
Vitaliy S.
VP, Product Management
Posts: 27055
Liked: 2710 times
Joined: Mar 30, 2009 9:13 am
Full Name: Vitaliy Safarov
Contact:

Re: How veeam delete old restore point?

Post by Vitaliy S. »

lp@albersdruck.de wrote:Or make it depending on the last run being successful?
This is how it works right now :) retention is applied right after your job completes. Thanks for the feedback anyway!
rswanson
Lurker
Posts: 1
Liked: never
Joined: Aug 21, 2013 5:31 pm
Full Name: Bob Swanson
Contact:

Re: How veeam delete old restore point?

Post by rswanson »

If you're changing the restore points from say... 12 to 6, chances are that you are like the rest of folks on this post and have plumb run out of disk space. And you have no more disk to add 'cuz you're trying to remove backups (last resort).

Having retention policy applied at the end of a successful job is a good thing. And successful jobs should apply the retention policy and remove extraneous backups only after a successful job (tough to determine if a job will be successful before it runs).

So, we know:
a) how to change the retention policy (number of restore points) by editing a job
b) how to delete extraneous backups to match the retention policy after a job completes successfully

I don't understand what is keeping you (Veeam) from using the knowledge in "a" and "b" above to
c) delete extraneous backups to match the retention policy when the retention policy changes. Oh my god... you could even put a check box there to make sure you want to delete the extraneous backups.

My son is a physicist. He talks rocket science. This doesn't sound anything like what he talks about... thus I recon it ain't rocket science.
Doug.Butler
Enthusiast
Posts: 30
Liked: 4 times
Joined: Jun 22, 2011 10:41 pm
Full Name: Douglas J. Butler
Contact:

Re: How veeam delete old restore point?

Post by Doug.Butler »

Sorry to bump this old topic (6 months), and sorry also to change the topic slightly, but I'd like to know more about the "space notifications". My jobs send me e-mail when they fail for any reason (including lack of space), but are you referring to something else that proactively monitors space on the repository?
foggy
Veeam Software
Posts: 21069
Liked: 2115 times
Joined: Jul 11, 2011 10:22 am
Full Name: Alexander Fogelson
Contact:

Re: How veeam delete old restore point?

Post by foggy »

Space notifications settings are available in the main Veeam B&R options dialog.
Vitaliy S.
VP, Product Management
Posts: 27055
Liked: 2710 times
Joined: Mar 30, 2009 9:13 am
Full Name: Vitaliy Safarov
Contact:

Re: How veeam delete old restore point?

Post by Vitaliy S. »

Doug.Butler wrote:My jobs send me e-mail when they fail for any reason (including lack of space), but are you referring to something else that proactively monitors space on the repository?
You can also use Veeam ONE (part of Availability Suite) to not only monitor free space on the repository, but also use capacity planning capabilities to predict the date when your storage will run out of space.
JayP819
Lurker
Posts: 1
Liked: never
Joined: Dec 18, 2019 6:51 pm
Contact:

[MERGED] How to automatically delete the eldest backups when a repository becomes full

Post by JayP819 »

I'm using the latest version of Veeam Backup & Replication.
I would like to know if there is a way to automatically delete the eldest backups when a repository becomes full.
Currently I found how to delete backups after a certain number of them have been made, but I'm really looking for only when the repository (external hard drive) is full. Is that possible?
wishr
Veteran
Posts: 3077
Liked: 453 times
Joined: Aug 07, 2018 3:11 pm
Full Name: Fedor Maslov
Contact:

Re: How to automatically delete the eldest backups when a repository becomes full

Post by wishr »

Hi Jay,

Currently, you can only operate the retention settings (retention is applied after the end of a successful job session). I'm merging your question with an existing thread - please take a look.

Thanks
Post Reply

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: Google [Bot], IvanK, restore-helper, srlarsen and 169 guests