Hi @stiggr ...you can configure GFS Long -Term Backups within your backup job. You can read about it here  and here.

Hope that helps. 

Hi!

Youve got to decide first where you want to store your backup for that length of time, disk, cloud, or tape? Cloud and tape are good candidates for this.

Next, do you need to retain ALL backups for 7 years? Or can you do a staggered retention such as all daily incrementals for a month, all weekly backups for 6 weeks, all monthly for 12 months, all yearly for 7 years?

Those two questions will help shape the policy.

If you want to use disk or cloud, and only want to keep certain backups for the 7 year duration you’ll need to enable GFS backup retention within your backup/backup copy job to choose which ones you’re storing and for how long.

If you want to use cloud, you’ll require to be using a licensed version such as VUL licensing, or if socket-based then at least enterprise edition. You’ll typically create a scale-out backup repository that has your local backup repository, and then a capacity tier to offload older backups you’re less likely to recover such as weekly/monthly backups, and you can use an archive tier optionally to store even older backups on a cheaper cloud tier, such as AWS S3 Glacier or Azure Archive tier.

If you want to use tape you can create a GFS tape job if you wish to only retain certain types of backups such as weekly/monthly/yearly for specific durations.

Hopefully this gives you some food for thought, and if you need more information on what licenses are required for which features, the details are here: https://www.veeam.com/veeam_data_platform_feature_comparison_ds.pdf

Also, you can configure up to 999 restore points for each (W, M, and Y), but I believe 9999 for yearly, so you'll be covered. 

But remember, each restore point is a Full backup, so you'll require a lot of disk Repo space. 

I have a requirement to retain backups in the 7d 4w 12m 7y rotation setup, But I’ve found that works for “live” machines, but doesn’t once the machine is decomissioned, then the remove deleted items after 7 days comes in.

Hi @stiggr,

My peers have highlighted on some ways to achieve this. Here is another approach: https://forums.veeam.com/vmware-vsphere-f24/backing-up-decomissioned-vms-t30773.html

Hey @stiggr check your backup job settings; storage, advanced, maintenance:
 

as mentioned above; you have some options. also backup copy jobs may work for you.

We always create an “new” backupjob (full) for the case a system is decomissoned and do a tapeout with the needed retention This can also be done with a vtl or vtl to cloud and so on..
But it always depends on your requirement what backup data or better hoq many restore points of this system must be archived.

Best regards
Daniel

As mentioned by @ger.itpro , you can deselect to auto-delete your decom’d VMs; but, you’ll have to remember to manually delete them when you’re ready to do so. Sometimes I do just as Get.ITPro also mentioned...I create a separate b/u job for decom’d VMs and keep it for a time.

Hi @stiggr if you’re backing up to disk/cloud storage then use as @ger.itpro said and disable the remove deleted items data. You can still purge servers manually, provided it’s not immutable.

Whereas tape you don’t need to worry about this.

I wasn’t aware that “remove deleted items” did that I thought it was there to give you a chance to recover from a accidental deleteion