Backup job retention policy and remove deleted items data after parameter

[adam900331]

Hy!

When I configure a backup job, I can define the backup retention policy, I set it to 7days. When I go to the Maintenance pane on Advanced settings I can define the retention which is related to deleted items. Is the deleted items related, when I remove a VM from backup job or remove from production environment? What happens when I set the "Remove deleted items data after" parameter to 14? Is it overwrite the retention policy value (7 days) and can I restore ONLY the removed VM from backup job in 14 days?

Its not clear for me.

Thanks.

[Mildur]

Hi Adam

It's related to "remove a VM from backup job". When the VM is no longer processed by the backup job (VM was deleted/VM removed or excluded from the job), VBR will delete the older restore points after the configured day. If you have enabled synthetic or active full backup with per-machine backup chains, the retention policy for deleted items will be ignored by the job.
From our user guide:

When you enable retention policy for deleted items, Veeam Backup & Replication will remove data for machines that are no longer processed by the backup job from the backup repository.

____________

What happens when I set the "Remove deleted items data after" parameter to 14? Is it overwrite the retention policy value (7 days) and can I restore ONLY the removed VM from backup job in 14 days?

With a retention policy type of "restore points", I expect the restore point to be removed after 14 days. With a retention policy of "days", I expect the restore points to be removed by the configured retention policy, except for the last three days, which we always keep when there was no new backup of a vm. After 14 days, the 3 last days of restore points will be removed by the retention policy for deleted items will be applied.

[masonit]

Hi!

What happens with the backupdata for a vm that is removed from a backup jobb with retention 7 days and "Remove deleted items data after" unchecked (not active). Will the backupdata be removed after 7 days or not removed at all?

\Maso

[masonit]

Hi!

Any body knows?

[sandsturm]

Hi
I have another question concerning the "Remove deleted items data after" flag. My backupjob is configured with a Retentionpolicy of 21 days and a GFS policy with "keep weekly full backups" for 13 weeks. The backupjob runs once a day, synthetic full backup every Friday, Friday backup is used for the GFS weekly points. The "Remove deleted items data after" is set to 14 days.
I removed a virtual machine on 30.7.2023 and checked today if I still see some backups and in fact I can still see the oldest GFS restore points (8 weekly restore points from 10.6.2023 until 10.6.2023 for every Friday are still there). How does the "Remove deleted items data after" work with GFS retention? Are these 14 days in my case set on top of the GFS retention and only than are the files deleted? Example:

30.7.2023 (removal day of VM) + 13 weeks (GFS retention) + 14 days (remove items after 14 days)?

Could not find anything in the documentation regarding this topic and hope anybody can help me here in the forum....

thx,
sandsturm

[Mildur]

@masonit
Backup Job retention or our new background retention job (in v12) will take care of it.
https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backu ... ml?ver=120

@sandsturm

How does the "Remove deleted items data after" work with GFS retention?

This option only removes regular backup chains. It doesn't remove GFS restore points. GFS restore points are removed based on their GFS retention.

We have it documented here for backup jobs:
https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backu ... imitations

Retention policy for deleted items does not apply to full backup files to which GFS flags are assigned.

And here for backup copy jobs:
https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backu ... ml?ver=120

The deleted items retention applies only to regular backup chains. Veeam Backup & Replication does not remove data for deleted machines from weekly, monthly and yearly backups.

Best,
Fabian

[sandsturm]

Hi Fabian

Thanks a lot for the clarification. Good to know, that GFS retentionpoints will not be removed. So we have to take care about them by ourselfs.

regards,
sandsturm

[_james]

Hello Mildur

Question from my side but with using Backup-copy-jobs - retention is set to 7 points, Remove deleted items is not checked.
If I remove a particular backup-job from backup-copy-job, will there still be data from said particular job in the backup-copy-job? Or with backup-copy-jobs it is different and Veeam will remove it?

[_james]

Hello, do anyone know about retention and deleted items option when working with backup-copy-jobs? Our goal is to exclude some jobs from backup-copy-job but not to delete them.

[steamingPeople]

Hi,

I'm confused with deleted item retention,

• Do deleted items get processed by regular short term retention irrespective of deleted items retention setting? Which means Deleted item retention is only needed if we want to shorten the regular short term retention, and to delete the last 3 restore points that short term retention would never delete? If this is the case, is it background retention that deletes the restore points or the job itself?

• Or do they specifically need to be targeted with deleted items retention to be processed at all?

In the documentation https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backu ... up%20chain it specifically says

In addition to it, Veeam Backup & Replication applies general retention policy rules to maintain the necessary number of restore points in the backup chain

which makes me understand that regular short term retention continues on deleted items even though deleted items isn't enabled. Is this correct?

[steamingPeople]

Following up on the above.

[chrislove]

If something is removed from the backup job then all restore points (minus GFS) for it will be removed after X number of days if that option is ticked. If not, then restore points for the removed object will adhere to the job retention settings and be processed by background rentention.