Too many restore points!

[macademy]

Quick question (hopefully!).

Our backup to disk is configured to keep 30 restore points, but we appear to have 32 restore points available.

Is there a simple explanation why we seem to have too many restore points?

[Shestakov]

Hello Ian,
Yes there is if you`re using forward incremental backup method. In this case the last full backup can`t be deleted until the whole dependent chain become outdated, otherwise its increments will be useless.
Is the case look like yours?
Thanks!

[macademy]

Hi,

Yes, our backup job is forward incremental.

There's currently 7 full backup files in the repository, the oldest is dated 13/12/2014....I thought there would only be 4 or 5 full backups maximum.

Nothing to worry about then? We have 5Tb free on the backup repository, so space is not an issue yet.

[Shestakov]

Probably there is nothing to worry about, but, if you expected 4 or 5 but got 7 full backups, it is better to know why.
How often have you scheduled the job to create full backups? How often does the job run at all?
Thanks.

[macademy]

Is this the settings you mean?



We create a synthetic full every Friday, this is our full backup.

The backup job runs at 23:59 every weeknight.

[Shestakov]

Yes, thanks for the answer.
With retention policy = 30 restore points you have got to have 5 or 6 Full backups and 30 to 36 restore points depending on the day.
So having slightly more restore points than set in the job is expected if you use forward incremental backup method.

[macademy]

Got it, thanks for clearing that up.

Thanks!

Ian

[Shestakov]

You are welcome, Ian.
Once you have a question, don`t hesitate to ask!