Cleanup Backups after deleting a VM

[c_aus_k]

hello,

i´m running veeam 9.5u4 on VMware vSphere 6.7

My backup repository is running out of space after migration to Server 2019. After deleting my old Windows VMs, they were still naturally existing in the Backup Repository.

Does veeam offer a way to clean up the repository for the deleted VMs?

Thanks for your feedback

Christian

[nielsengelen]

There are a few options:
1) You can just delete them from the backups manually in the inventory pane.
2) You can enable the option to remove them automatically in the job by enabling this feature.

[c_aus_k]

That is exactly what I have been looking for. Thank you for the fast answer.

[c_aus_k]

Unfortunately, the problem is not yet resolved:
I was able to delete the necessary backups as described in the Help Center, but this had no effect on the capacity of the storage. The storage is still full. A rescan of the storage also has no effect.
The deleted VMs should have brought significant relief

Do you have an idea?

[nielsengelen]

Are u sure they are pointing to the disk which is running full? Are you using ReFS or NTFS disk?

[c_aus_k]

I am absolutely sure that I deleted the right VM from the right disk. The deleted VM is also no longer offered if I want to restore something.
I still have a copyjob to another disk. I deleted the VM from the second (copy) disk. Here, too, not a single kb was released on the storage

My storages are NAS Servers from EuroStor. I´m not sure witch filesystem is used by them.

[nielsengelen]

It may be good to get some insight via support then to look via a webex what is going on as I'm not familiar with those NAS devices nor how they do their clean up.

[backupquestions]

If you are not using per vm backup files, then you are not going to see space cleared on the repository because it's one vbk and one vib chain.

What happens is the blocks of data in the vbk are marked for re use.. so if you add new servers to the job then you will find that the space required should not really grow by much in the vbk for a bit as it will re write over them.

[foggy]

That's correct. Another way to get rid of the unused blocks in the backup file is creating a new full if you have space for it.

[Toormser]

Hello Community,

after I navigate to Home -> Backups -> Disk -> and to my destination vm which I will remove. Right click on it -> Remove from Disk. This progress was successfull. But before deletion I've got 60GB free space on my backup-repo. After delete the vm from my backup, I still have only 60GB free space on my backup-repo (D:\VeeamRepo\)

Can anybody explain this? The remove-jobs was successfully on all selected vm's (more than 10 vm I've deleted).

Thanks.

[oleg.feoktistov]

Hi Patrick and welcome to the Community Forums!

Do you observe the same free space amount after backup deletion right on the repo or in Veeam Backup Console?
If 2nd option is the case, I'd advise to rescan the repository.

Thanks,
Oleg

[foggy]

Hi Patrick, unless per-VM backup chains setting is enabled in your repository, space isn't reclaimed immediately bur rather marked as unused. Please see the above discussion for some details. Thanks!

[RubinCompServ]

There are a few options:
1) You can just delete them from the backups manually in the inventory pane.
2) You can enable the option to remove them automatically in the job by enabling this feature.

How does "Remove deleted items data" handle GFS points? If someone deletes a VM, will the backup job also delete the old GFS points? Or will those remain for the life of the GFS configuration?

[Mildur]

Hi David

It doesn't affect GFS backups:
https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backu ... ml?ver=120

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

GFS restore points are deleted accordingly to their GFS retention.

Best,
Fabian

[RubinCompServ]

Thank you @Mildur, that's exactly what I needed to know!