Backup Retention

[bgalante]

Hi,

I have several jobs, where there are currently 50 restore points being retained. I have the job set to only retain 21 restore points.

I see it says "Actual restore point may be larger depending on full backup schedule".

I have it scheduled to do a full backup once a week. The oldest full backup I have is 9/12 and the newest is 11/4. There are a total of 4 full backups present.
(I had recently tweaked the schedule that's why the fulls are going back that far.)

Is there a formula I can use to estimate how many restore points Veeam will retain? Like 4 full backups within the last N# days, or something dependent on how many restore points I have set to retain?

I appreciate your help on this!
Brian

[foggy]

Brian, do you use forward incremental mode? In this case, indeed, the actual number of restore points on disk may vary from day to day, depending on the full backup schedule. However with daily backups and weekly fulls 50 restore points is a bit higher than expected maximum for retention set to 21 (probably this is due to the recent changes you've made and excessive restore points will finally be deleted according to the new retention setting). What backup files do you currently have in the backup folder?

[bgalante]

Yes, I am. I just ran a full backup on this particular job I was referencing, and it now deleted all the extra restore points and I'm down to 21 total.
So now at this point, I have 4 full backups, and my oldest is from 10/17.
Thats a very interesting article....

IS the best practice to not enbable a synthetic or full backup, and just do incrementals?
Right now I have synthetic full backups configured for once a week, and I notice those take a very long time to run.

[foggy]

It is generally recommended to have forever forward incremental backups (so no periodic synthetic or active fulls) and use SureBackup for recoverability testing.