[FEATURE REQUEST] Manually Delete Restore Points

[TstAgs]

Hi,

we are a registered company, actually to delete old Restore Points,

the only method is to modify the Retension and Wait for it to delete automatically, then reset the retension again.

This is not a so elegant or a practical way of doing a task i think of as a normal backup administration.

So i'm asking here, please, to add the simple feature of "Manually Delete Restore Points" (in case of out of space wich requires instant fixing).

The same options as already present that is "Delete from Backups" and "Delete from disk".

Thank you very much

[Vitaliy S.]

Hello,

Can you please clarify why do you need to delete restore points? Also please note that you cannot delete only one restore point in forward incremental backup mode, the entire chain (full backup cycle VBK + VIBs) should be deleted in this situation.

(in case of out of space wich requires instant fixing).

Do you use any monitoring tools to track free space and perform trend analysis/capacity planning on the backup storage?

Thank you for your feedback!

[Gostev]

This is not a so elegant or a practical way of doing a task i think of as a normal backup administration.

If you ask me, deleting older backup restore points is far less elegant, and most definitely cannot be considered "normal backup administration".

I assume that if you set your job to keep certain amount of restore points, the decision on the amount of restore points is driven by internal policies or regulatory compliance. This means, you cannot just come and delete some older restore points, as you will be in violation of those requirements?

Frankly speaking, I don't like this idea, as this also opens a big can of worms that you cannot immediately see. Having this functionality in the user interface only further promotes incorrect approach to treating your backups (not doing proper disk space planning, on-going monitor and trend analysis). Besides, all of a sudden, everyone can now easily delete some restore points, for example to hide something, or mistakenly. There must be a better way?

[TstAgs]

Hi Gostev,

frankly i think that what i can or cannot do is my choice. I decide my policy, and i decide if i need to violate them for

whatever reason. I think a "professional" and "enterprise" software must permit me to do everythink i want / need,

assuming i'm an expert person workin for an enterprise.

If the software is supposed to serve junior admins, and to "baby-sitting" them, telling them what is right or wrong

for them to do, is another story, and this can lead me to re-evaluate the software phylosophy, that pheraps

doesn't help me in my work, but is "against" me.

The best approach, considering you point of view could be to make a flag "Advanced" wich unhide an entire set

of super-advanced features, so that you "software productor" are "safe" in case of some "junior" makes some mistakes.

Think about it.

Thanks

[Gostev]

I decide my policy, and i decide if i need to violate them for whatever reason.

the only method is to modify the Retension and Wait for it to delete automatically, then reset the retension again

This in red clearly means that your existing retention policy is very important for you, otherwise you would have just kept it reduced. Besides, resetting retention back means that your backup repository will simply overfill again in a few days... thus, temporarily deleting a few older backups does not give you anything in the long run. Just one of many reasons why I don't like the proposed option: it does not solve the actual problem, as you will face the same issue again in just a few days!

You are right, ease of use and "baby-sitting" backup admins is one of the cornerstones of Veeam's software philosophy... having had a chance for the past 6 years to observe over 80000 customers managing their backups, I can assure you there are very few true backup experts, and may be only 10% at most have required experience and knowledge to be self-sufficient backup admin. The rest must be coached, so we hold them by the hand with the user interface to ensure they are successful with our product.

"professional" and "enterprise" software must permit me to do everythink i want/need

If we adopt your definition of "professional enterprise software", then I can say Veeam is definitely "unprofessional" and "not enterprise" software. But I am good with that, seeing us replacing that "professional" and "enterprise" software left and right in the past years

I concur we lack complexity to be considered "true enterprise software" in a sense that most people are used to with legacy solutions. Think of Veeam as an iPhone of VM backup. We will not have "Advanced Task Killer" type of stuff so to speak (a feature I noted looking at Android phone recently), we prefer to make those complexities unnecessary, just like iPhone does. This may explain why I am against adding "Advanced Restore Point Deleter" feature to our product

This topic is actually the perfect illustration of how our approach to adding features is different from legacy backup vendors:

User:
I want to be able to manually delete older backups when I run out of space.

Professional Enterprise Software vendor:
OK, you got it. We already have 1 million of options in our crowded and confusing UI, who cares if we add one more. Don't care it's unsafe, don't care is against normal backup practices to delete restore points still under retention policy - you asked for it, so we will blindly deliver. It's your responsibility now to use it correctly. And sorry those thousands of other users, most less experienced than you, who did NOT ask for this option, but will now have it readily available for all sorts of misuse.

Veeam:
This does not seem a right thing to do. It is against common sense to enable you to easily delete restore points still protected by retention policy. Let's discuss the better solution, one that will not require you violating your policies, as obviously you had good reasons when defining those? Let's avoid making such an unsafe option readily available to all users, let's not promote bad backup practices with having it available, let's do it the right way!

Let's discuss and come up with a better way to resolve this issue, the one that does not require violating retention policies, or introducing unsafe options that will not fix the issue anyway. For example, I always liked the idea when the job can "overflow" to a secondary repository should the primary one become full, and still continue executing transparently. Or, you can address this easily outside Veeam if you are using Window Server 2012 as your backup repository server (Storage Spaces allow to easily add capacity to the existing volume).