How to create space for new backups by reducing the retention policy

The backups are not immutable right as that would play a factor.  You can manually run retention, see here - https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backup/vsphere/backup_background_retention_launch.html?ver=120

Hi, thank you.  Just tried that, and it finished successfully, but it doesn’t seem to have opened up any space?  

Hi ​@Hammer -

First, it is imperative to know what Backup Method you’re using - Forward Increm, Forever Fwd Increm, or Reverse. If FFwd, retention calculation is simple. What you configure your retention to be, will be what files show on your Repo disk (once you reach the configured Retention). If Veeam isn’t removing files from your Repo right after Retention reconfig, may be best to contact Support. Fwd Increm is different. Veeam needs to keep extra files on disk to maintain your configured Retention. This KB shows an animation of how each work:

https://www.veeam.com/kb1932

Last...when your Repo Restore Points get removed also depends on if you have Immutability configured, as Chris stated. If so, the easiest way to see when a Restore Point ‘expires’ is to go into your Backup > Disk area, rt-click the Job in question > Properties, and then click a VM in the top. You’ll see all it’s Restore Points in the bottom pane and the date when it expires. That should give you an idea of when Veeam should start to clean up files from your Repo. But...that only applies if you have Immutability configured...not normal non-Immutable backups. The below talks about how Immutability expiry works:

https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backup/vsphere/hardened_repository_immutability.html?ver=120

Let us know if you have further questions.

Best.

Sometimes, after Retention, you may need to do a Repository Rescan operation.

So then are you using immutability for your backups?  If so then the block generation will prevent them being deleted as well as the retention period.

This KB explains retention more - https://www.veeam.com/kb1990

Support is a last option if needed.

Well...Block Generation may not necessarily be used here. That technology/feature is only for Object Storage Repos using Immutability. But yes...if you are using Object, that is certainly something which needs to be considered as well.

You can’t add more storage?  Hard drives are cheap.   I just started replacing my 4TB WD Black drives with 8TB WD Black drives.

Hi, I can add a new drive…if I do that, is there a way to add the new drive to the existing repository so that it spans both drives?  

How many arrays do you have?  Started replacing drives with 8TB WD Black SATA.  

my VEEAM CE is setup
C: for OS  : 

L: for VEEAM workstation backups 
M: for Ubuntu VMs
N: for FamilyPics VM (500 GB of data and growing
O: for Dropbox VM 

I have three LTO 4 tape drives backing up
1.)  L and M
2.) N
3 O

Do you use RAID 0, 1, or 5 for your arrays?

 

Hi, I have one 24TB drive right now and it is full.  Is it possible to add a second 24TB drive to the existing repository?

What is your controller?
How many drives?
What is your raid level? 
How many empty slots for drives available?
Do you have hot spare drives? 

You have one 24TB drive.   You can’t do RAID wiithout wiping your data.   I would add a RAID controller and 4 hard drives to do RAID 0+1.   You can then migrate the data to a larger array with failover and the ability to expand the array.   You could do a 10 Gbps NAS or SAN too.   

Okay, thanks.  I was hoping to avoid that trouble and hence wanted to see if I can delete the older backups that I don’t need instead.

You can change it to 30 or 45 days from 90 days.   It should purge the older files.

Support can help very quickly with it, given it is not immutable of course. It’s not a complicated case for them. I am sure there is a procedure online somewhere, but better to do it via support

​@Hammer  - just wanted to follow up and see if you were able to get an answer from this thread? If so please mark the best answer or if you figured it out post the answer then mark that one as the best answer.

If your drive is full as you say this could be an issue too.

Depending on the job type, you need to run an additional job to continue the chain. Example, if every Friday I do an active full, The incremental from Sat-Thursday remain until Friday completes successfully. 

This link provided should work.

Launching Background Retention - User Guide for VMware vSphere

If you are not using immutable storage and lower your retention does it have any effect? If not I’d suggest a ticket to support. Sometimes you need to clear up room on a full drive before issues can be resolved too.

Depending on what drive, where things are installed too, there still has to be room for databases, logfiles and other stuff to work. This also goes for some swingspace for my above scenario.   I always leave a bit of a buffer on my disks to expand for such a situation You never want to provision an entire SAN and realize you have to delete some production in a critical situation.