I have a "Backup Copy" job going to a remote site. I want to remove all backups for a single machine there as they are no longer needed.
If I navigate to Backups -> Disk (Copy), then expand the job, then right-click on the MACHINE and click "Delete from disk", I get the image shown. The checkbox text is JUST vague enough to scare me. If I check the box, this will be deleting all backups for ONLY the machine I selected right? All other machines in the job will remain untouched?
It will only remove restore points from the selected machine. In my first days of veeam, I found the message also a little bit scary.
If backup files can be deleted, depends on what backup chain type you are using.
Is it per-Machine Backup Chain or per-Job Backup Chain?
If you use per-Job Backup Chain, then veeam will only remove the restore points of the selected vm from the configuration database and not from the disk. Blocks of the machines in the backup files will be marked as empty. But the backup files cannot be deleted, because they contain backups from the other machines.
If you are using per-Machine Backup Chain, then veeam will remove the backup files of the selected machine.
Great info! I don't have the licensing required for per-machine backup chain. Does that mean that when I delete backups for a certain server, then space is never really recovered? That's what the linked article seems to state. This seems like a case where I'd want to potentially separate gigantic machines into their own jobs! As it stands, I'm going to have 2 TB of "bloat" in my remote backup after I delete an unneeded server.
Does that mean that when I delete backups for a certain server, then space is never really recovered?
It will remove it accordingly to the configured retention period settings (short term and gfs).
If there are other vms in the backup chain and you have configured Forward incremental with GFS, veeam can only delete a backup file (short term retention and gfs) after the retention period for the other vm‘s are over. It will not shrink the backup Files.
