OK to Delete Old *.vrb and *.vbk?

[jlester]

We had an issue with a remote NAS last month that went offline. In trying to get it fixed, we had to cancel a few Veeam jobs that were running. Everything is working fine again now and I have the correct number of backup days. There are two files from that time period for a couple of the jobs that were canceled: 1 .vrb and 1 .vbk. They are way past our retention period. Is there a process to clean those up or should I just delete them manually? I just want to be sure I don't mess up the backup chain somehow.

Thanks,
Jason

[Vitaliy S.]

Hi Jason,

Do these point exist when you click to restore the VM from the backup file? Retention policy should remove all files that fall out of your retention policy settings.

As far as I see you're using reversed incremental backup mode, right? If yes, then assuming you have a new VBK file (full backup) and the set of new VRB files that depend on this VBK, it is safe to delete these old VBK and VRB files manually.

Thanks!

[ortoscale]

Custome is running out of space on weekly backups , using RI. we would like to keep only monthly for oldest backups. I guess there is no way to do this via Veeam console. If I do it by hand, is it possible to reindex DB in a way that it will refresh to actual state?
thanks, Matjaz

[PTide]

Hi,

Not sure what you want to accomplish. Do you want to pull existing monthly full backups out of your chain and delete everything else?

Thank you.

[ortoscale]

Customer doing weekly with 52 restore point. That's about 1 year. We would like to delete some old weekly .vrb to gain space and reindex db to have clear state in veeam console.

[PTide]

Hi,

You can convert your reverse backups into Fulls via Backup Copy Job. You need to copy the desired part of a chain, create a backup job mapped to that chain, create a backup copy job with an appropriate sync interval, point it to a new backup job, start backup copy - it will create a vbk. Keep doing that until you get e desired amount of restore points. Also please take a look at this thread.

Thank you.

[ortoscale]

Sounds legit. I was going to implement Backup Copy job but first need to clear some space for it. Didn't think of copy and map, thanks for that tip. So i guess there is no way to just delete .vrb and reindex? The other option would be to leave .vbk and .vrb where there are and map Backup copy job there with appropriate sync interval. But that way we could loose data with wrong settings. Will try to figure something out if it.

[ortoscale]

But it guess it won't work your way. Just doing test map and got this unable to map backup: Backup Copy support forward incremental backup chains only. And i have reverse incrementals...

[PTide]

The other option would be to leave .vbk and .vrb where there are and map Backup copy job there with appropriate sync interval. But that way we could loose data with wrong settings

Not sure how is it possible to loose your original backup data while doing a backup copy...the initial backup chain stays intact.

So i guess there is no way to just delete .vrb and reindex?

Currently there is no such option.

Actually, you might want just to copy the oldest monthly fulls somewhere manually, then readjust retention for your current job so that the oldest restore points are managed by BCJ which has a GFS-retention option, allowing you to keep monthlies in way more easier than if you used simple backup job.

[ortoscale]

This won't go because:
1) no extra space to copy data around
2) original backup job is set as reverse incremental so there are no monthly fulls + BCJ seems to support only FI, see my last post

[PTide]

You are right, I'm sorry, totally slipped from my mind that you have a reversed...then the only option would be to do instant recovery at the desired RPs + veeamZIP in order to obtain monthly full backups.

[ortoscale]

Quick addon, i guess restore from restore poin is not possible, if there are missing .vbr between that point and latest .vbk?

[Shestakov]

i guess restore from restore poin is not possible, if there are missing .vbr between that point and latest .vbk?

That`s correct. You need to have no missing incrementals between .vbk and .vrb(vib) you are restoring from. However, you can delete old incrementals and leave fulls only if you want save some space(loosing those restore points).