Remove deleted VMs after (Backup vs Backup Copy)

[david.buchanan]

Hi All,

Currently I don't have this setting enabled in my Backup or Backup Copy jobs. However I wish to enable it for our Backup jobs only but want to confirm I understand the behavior correctly.

All our Backups keep 1 week worth of data. Because I've never enabled this setting if I remove a VM from our production infrastructure it will continue to exist in my Backup file forever (eg: a VM deleted 6 months ago would still be in my Backup file).

Our Backup Copy job then copies these restore points and creates Weekly and Monthly files. The deleted VM will exist here as well.

What I would like to do is enable the setting "Remove deleted VMs after" 7 days. This way my backups will actually only have VMs that exist in production.

I can see the Backup Copy job has a separate setting for this. So I assume by enabling this setting in the Backup job the VM will continue to exist forever in my Backup Copy job.

The end goal being that Backup jobs only contain current production VMs. Backup Copy jobs contain archive data and deleted VMs.

Is this correct?

Thanks,
David.

[veremin]

Correct. If you disable remove deleted VMs retention for a backup copy job, it will preserve corresponding restore points forever. Thanks.

[david.buchanan]

Excellent, thanks v.Eremin.

Regards,
David.

[veremin]

You're welcome, David. Should other questions arise, don't hesitate to let us know. Thanks.

[foggy]

I'd just add, that deleted VMs retention applies only to reverse incremental backup chains, forever forward incremental and forward incremental backup chains for which synthetic full backups with subsequent transform is enabled. Also, keep in mind that if you do active fulls or compact operation for the backup copy jobs, then the behavior regarding deleted VMs data might differ from what you expect.

[stuartmacgreen]

If you disable remove deleted VMs retention for a backup copy job, it will preserve corresponding restore points forever.

Is there a difference if you are performing per VM backups here. As the VM's will be visible files on their own and no longer INSIDE a big VBK. It's easier to perform housekeeping on this basis - no?

[foggy]

Yes, you could identify and delete the corresponding backups manually from disk, if required (however they'd still remain registered in UI).