Removing restore points when VM no longer managed by a job

[accf]

I have an issue where VMs that are no longer managed by a job are retained in the backup set.

My jobs are structured with 1 job per datastore. When I perform Storage vMotion a different job will protect that VM.

It appears the previous job will expire restore points until it reaches the last remaining full backup, at this stage it appears to ignore it.

Normally I then delete the final remaining backup using the Veeam console, this isn’t ideal as it requires manual intervention. My preference would be for Veeam to automatically delete this data using the same criteria as for deleted VMs.

I have spoken with support regarding this (Case # 02251991). There appears to be some disconnect when using forward incremental backups. The “Limitations for Retention Policy for Deleted VMs” in the documentation appears to suggest a synthetic full is necessary for automatic deletions when using forward incremental backups. I don’t understand why an active full isn’t a suitable alternative.

How do I ensure a VM backup is automatically removed from a repository <N> days after it is no longer managed by a job? Is this a feature request? Or bug?

Points to note:
1. Backups are forward incremental, with a weekly active full
2. Jobs are configured to remove deleted VMs after 90 days
3. Repository is set to ‘User per-VM backup files’ as it is a deduplication appliance

[DGrinev]

Hi and welcome to the community!

It doesn't look like a normal behavior for the per-VM backup chain, we will investigate it further. Thanks!

[DGrinev]

Hi,

Confirmed as a bug thank you for the heads up, we will fix it in the next releases. Thanks!

[Stabz]

Hi,
I have a new question for you!

I have Incremental Backup Job with active full backup planed every Saturday, the destination is a repository with the option Per-vm enabled.

Recently, I removed from my Vmware infrastructure some Vms which were useless, to avoid any failed backup, I also removed the Vms from my backup job.

I noticed today that the deleted vms appear like this in the job : "vm is no longer processed by this job. Make sure this change is intentional"
I checked the repository and there are a full backup and some increment for this vms.

Is the option "remove deleted VMS data afeter" could help me to deleted this old files ?

Thanks
Philippe

[DGrinev]

Hi Philippe,

In your scenario, it's not possible to automatically delete backups for VMs that has been removed from the job due to a known bug.
However, if you will switch to Synthetic fulls with subsequent transform, then retention policy for deleted VMs should work.

Please check this thread for additional information. Thanks!

[Stabz]

Hi DGrinev,

Thanks for the answer !

Ok I will take a look to switch to "synthetic fulls".

If I delete manually the files from the repository, is that possible to have any impact or its ok ?

[DGrinev]

I'd recommend you to use built-in option called Deleting from Disk to be sure you've deleted the right files. Thanks!

[accf]

Great, thanks for looking into this.

[mkretzer]

Hello,

Case 02599551.

We have the problem that with per-VM backup chains backups of VMs which were deleted stay in the backup repo indefinitely.

We do weekly synthetic fulls and monthly active fulls. Problem is that since we do not compact (which we do not want to do because of the active full) that there is simply no mechanism to remove these backups. That was also verified by Veeam support.

The question now is: does anyone already have a powershell script or something else to automatically delete these VM backups after the retention is over?

Markus

[DGrinev]

Hi Markus,

Please review this thread as it describes the workaround to enable deleted VMs functionality work. Thanks!

[mkretzer]

Transform is not really a workaround as it would increase backup times significantly! I hope this will get fixed soon!

[DGrinev]

Hi,

We have a private patch that you can obtain by raising a support ticket, it should fix the issue. Thanks!