What would happen to old points if i were to modifiy retention on backup copy

[Sam31Tls]

hello all, it is my first post, i hope i will make it right!

The context : Veeam B&R 11a, a "standard" repo for backup jobs, an immutable repo for backup copy job (which is our matter here).
The problem : 285 restore points on the backup copies intead of the 12 expected, making the repo almost full
First analysis = Day 1 configuration issue : retention set to 12 restore points (1 /day), immutability set to 31 days. As a result, the original first full backup copy (day 1) is follow by 284 increment.

My plan = correct the backup copy job setting :
- change the retention policy to 31 instead of 12
- make an active full backup to restart clean.

Now my question : what will happen to the 285 previous points, knowing that today 31 (from point 254 to 285) are still immutable?
- Will vB&R remove all the previous restore points from point 1 (full) to 253, rendering the 31 one remaining meaningless (i will have only the newly made active full available)?
- Or will it wait to have 30 incremental after my new active backup to remove all the previous restore points (the 285), in order to ensure the first chain of backup copy?

Thank you for your help!

Sam

[Mildur]

Hello Sam31Tls

Immutable restore points cannot be deleted.
If the backups are immutable, it will take 31 days after your new full backup till those old restore points can be removed.

- Or will it wait to have 30 incremental after my new active backup to remove all the previous restore points (the 285), in order to ensure the first chain of backup copy?

This will happen. You need to wait for approximately 32 days before the immutability runs out on the existing restore points. Another option would be to login to the hardened repository with a super user account (root or user with sudo permission), remove the immutable flag from all backup files and then delete them from the file system.

First analysis = Day 1 configuration issue : retention set to 12 restore points (1 /day), immutability set to 31 days. As a result, the original first full backup copy (day 1) is follow by 284 increment.

May I ask, why you got 1 full and 284 incremental backups? A hardened repository requires regular full backups. This sounds to me that either the weekly/monthly full backup is failing. Which should be investigated by a support case.

Best,
Fabian

[Sam31Tls]

Hello,
it appears that on this job GFS was enabled but only for a yearly backup. As a result it would have kept 365+31 restore point before applying the needed retention...
We activated monthly backup with 1 month retention and that should do it! we will see in a month and a half.

Thanks!

[Mildur]

Hi Sam

Thank you.
Yes, that makes sense.
With 30 days retention and 1 monthly full backup, your backup server will keep 30-60 days of backups.

Best,
Fabian