Restore points

[spgsit5upport]

I have backup set to 7 restore points.
First backup was full, then Incremental (Synthetic full on Friday)

Now I have 8 restore points on the disk (first full done on Friday, 4 incremental Mon-Thu, full syntetic next Friday, 2 incremental Mon-Tue). Yet I only wanted 7

My full backup is 4 Tb, I have 11 Tb assigned to this job

Does it really mean that this coming Friday backup will fail as there will be no more space for the full synthetic? (looks this way to me, I might be wrong)

Seb

[VladV]

There are several topics on retention policy that explain in detail how you should calculate the necessary space for your restore points.

It's simple, in your case you are using forward incrementals which means that each Friday you are starting a new backup chain. So each incremental you create depends on your full backup and the previous incrementals (ex: Tuesday depends on Mon Sun Sat and Friday's full). This means that you cannot delete the full backup without deleting the whole chain up until the last incremental before another full. This is just how forward incrementals work.

Given that you defined 7 restore points Veeam only deletes previous backups only when the result is no less than 7 backups. Taking your situation, if you began making backups on Friday, Friday being full, and incrementing each day, then only on the second Thursday Veeam will delete the previous chain. After completing Thursdays incremental you will have 14 restore points so Veeam will delete the first chain (of 7 restore points) thus leaving you with 7 restore points. In any case you will need at least 2 full backups.

If you're looking to delete each day and keep only one full backup then look into reverse incrementals.

Regards

[spgsit5upport]

reverse incrementals would be impossible due to the time it takes
I have less then 12 hours to finish it, so with this amount of data it would be most likely impossible

Thanks for the explanation, makes sense (but had to read it twice)

Seb

[Vitaliy S.]

And here is an existing topic for additional reading: Job Set for 14 Mount Points - 46 exist