So i been running V community for a year now backing up some vms and i just got a license to do immutable backups of a BareMetal server to a linux hardened repo. So i setup the repo with 7 days immutability and the backup with 7 days retention period. Setup Synthetic Full backups on Fridays and backup is running everyday.
on the first Friday it did a full backup of server (like 1tb or so) then every day i guess its incremental since its only a few gigs. Now came this Friday and was a few gigs too. Wasn't supposed to delete it and create a whole full backup?
Should i change retention from 7 days (to match repo immutability period) to keep 1-2 restore points instead? very confused on this scenario on what im supposed to be seeing on the logs. What's the best course of action for this type of backup?
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@SGOMEZ -
Immutability retention is kind of separate from job retention. How immutability with block storage works is the days you configure for immutability (7 days?) doesn't start until after the last restore point in an active chain is created. An active chain is defined as a Full and its subsequent Increments. So when you do another Fill (Friday), that's the beginning of an active chain...which doesn't necessarily coincide with your Job retention.
So, after your Thurs restore point increment is created, the 7 days starts then & all your active chain files are Immutable 7 days from that restore point date. Make sense?
im not sure i get it that way….lol sorry just new to this type of environment… so my active chain starts fridays because thats the day i do the synthetic full? so everything backed up every day before Thursday its not immutable until that last backup on Thursday? so is it better to say keep 1 restore points instead of 7 days retention policy ?
No....your backups are Immutable when created, but the *Immutable time period* doesn't start until after your Thurs restore point file is created.
An easy way to see the Immutable expiration is to go to the Home node in the VBR Console > Backups section > Disks, then rt-click on a Backup Job on the right & select Properties. Click on a VM in the list & you'll see a column in the bottom window pane showing 'immutability expiration' date.
Restore Points aren't deleted until after 7days from your Thurs increment.
got it, i have some that immutable period expires on 10/10 and others on 10/14 so when 10/10 hits this points will be deleted, correct?
That should be correct. All files in a given chain...yes. I have some Jobs that have deletes weekly as I have immutability for 7 days.
i think i understand it now and i guess my setup its somehow correct.
Yeah...you should be all good. Let me know if you have further questions. If any comments provided answered your question, go ahead and mark one as ‘Best Answer’ so others with a similar question who come across your post her will benefit. Thanks.
BTW..the link above has a couple examples in it to help better understand; although..I wish it discussed how immutability interacts with Job retention a bit more. A lot of folks who even read the info in the link I provided, seem to overlook something they should really think about moreso
Immutability retention
“Immutability retention overrides a Job retention.”
Best.
Shane is right on….so to clarify a bit more, because the oldest restore point is your fill backup, and each day after is incremental, it can’t delete the full restore point after 7 days, 8 days, etc because by deleting that full point, it would render the entire chain invalid because those incrementals all depend on that full. So after the entire chain has reached your retention policy of 7 days, it can then delete that chain. This is all entirely outside of immutability.
Also, I don’t want to throw another wrench into things here, but with immutability, there is also a function called block generation which I’m still trying to wrap my head around.
So testing myself here, assuming that you have 7 days of retention, and 7 days of immutability set, Veeam will add 10 days of immutability for block gen, so data will actually be immutable for 17 days, 10 days from block gen + 7 days from the oldest restore point in the chain. After that 17 days has passed, THEN the chain should be deleted. By my calculation, that means you could have 17 restore points including 3 weekly Full’s in your repository. Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong.
7 Day Immutability as specified
10 Day Block Generation as added by Veeam
7 Days Immutability as specified
10 Day Block Generation as specified by Veeam
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Block Generation doesn’t apply here because that is only with Object Storage immutability..not Block-based, as is the case with a Hardened Repo.
so on my case the highlighted ones are my 2 fills and since it expires this Friday that set from the week 27th to 3rd should be removed
Block Generation doesn’t apply here because that is only with Object Storage immutability..not Block-based, as is the case with a Hardened Repo.
Ah crap...I missed that it was a hardened repo and not object. Thanks for pointing that out. I hope everything else with block generation was correct though if it had been object storage.
so on my case the highlighted ones are my 2 fills and since it expires this Friday that set from the week 27th to 3rd should be removed
Yes, after the backup completes on Friday (11th), the restore points from the 4th on back should be removed per your retention policy.
