Too Many Restore Points – Backup Job. Veeam..vrb or.vib backup files in a job folder that are. Process was locking the file when the job tried to delete. Note: The software will continue to think the files that were manually removed exist until those points fall outside the configured retention scope. More Information If there are.vbk,.vrb or.vib backup files in a job folder that are not listed in the backup properties, this KB does not apply.
I have some SAN storage that is filling up with Veeam jobs that have got confused with backup failures and moves recently. There are a few jobs that can't complete successfully as there is not enough space. To get some space back I will need to delete some old restore points.
Is the best way to do this through Windows Explorer or will this cause some database issues? I realise Veeam will delete the old backups when a new one takes it's place but without the space for that I need to do something. Thanks in advance. Sorry to hijack this thread, but this is right up my alley. I am trying to switch from an infrastructure where all our VM's are in one backup task, to one where each VM has it's own backup task. The reason for this is that in the past, for whatever reason, one VM failed to backup, and none of the other VM's were backed up afterwards.
I need to have them run in parallel. But the free space on the backup is limited, so I created a new backup task with one of the smaller VM's, and then removed the VM from the original task, but I DID NOT remove the data, because I wanted to retain the data in case something went wrong with the new task.
Now it appears that the old data for that VM is not being deleted. How can I ensure that it is? Yes, it won't be deleted, Veeam works correctly.
You can't expect from it to delete VM data in existing backup chain. Once backup is done, it's packed and Veeam is not going to mix or rebuild. Bob, I'd not recommend you to select a new backup job for each VM, in this case you lose an opportunity of deduplication within one backup job. How many VMs do you have for backup? Plus, which version of Veeam do you use?
It's possible to utilize parallel backup processing since Veeam 7.0, not sure why you're referring to it such way. Bob, answering the last question, I can 100% assume you're using forward incremental backup mode. The way how it works might be a little bit confusing but it has a pretty straight-forward logic.
Full and incremental points within one chain contain this chain and belong only to it. To meet retention Veeam is able to delete only whole chain, not single points from it. Once it attempts to delete a chain, it checks how many points is going to be left after deletion and if it's less than retention you've set, it aborts the operation.
The case would be that you have just once incremental chain with a lot of points but since you haven't done neither synthetic nor full backup, you haven't started the second chain, so Veeam can't delete it. Please take a look at graphics here: If you have space on a datastore, make full backup to start a new chain within a job task. Or set to perform (might take some time and resources). Or simply call support guys who can help you if you have any concerns. Side note: in v8, there will be enabled by default, no confusion for users. Bob, please let me know if there anything else I can help you with.
Thanks for the tips. I did call an expert to remove the excess data. We have not configured a separate backup task for each VM. This allows us to backup a single VM without waiting for all the others to backup, whenever we need to do an update for that server. It also gives us discreet datasets for each backup so we can tell what data we are backing up.
I have switched to a reverse incremental mode for all the backups as (I have read) it is more efficient and gives us a single restore point. The person who set all this up for us originally was an 'expert' so I tend to want to understand and do things myself, but in this case I simply could not be certain I was not destroying backup data that I needed to retain.
Veeam Vib File
This issue started after I deleted a few.vib files from the backup repository in an effort to free up space on the repository for backup jobs. We are using Veeam 8. Here's the action I took to clear space (see screenshot). I deleted some.vib files between date 8/1 - 8/23. For this particular VM group, we do a full backup once a month, followed by incremental backups daily. That said, shouldn't it be OK to remove any.vib files with the exception of the.vbk file (full backup), and the last.vib file (in this case, the last.vib in the screenshot dated 9/2/2015)?
In viewing the backup job for that particular VM group, it now fail showing the following error message (screen shot embedded). It looks like the backup job tries to process then failed because it cannot find the.vib file that was created on 8/22/2015 because that.vib file I removed it from the repository. What should I do now to fix this problem? Hi, That said, shouldn't it be OK to remove any.vib files with the exception of the.vbk file (full backup), and the last.vib file (in this case, the last.vib in the screenshot dated 9/2/2015)? The answer is no. Because this is incremental backup, and not differencial. For instance when you restore you will need the last full backup and ALL the incremental backups since the last full.
If it were differencial backup you will need only last full and the last differencial backup. This is just to answer you and explain the theory, but if I remember correctly there is no differencial backup option in Veeam. And I agree with noxcho you should not delete files manually, or at least unless there is no other choices. You'd better do it from the Veeam GUI, in the 'Virtual Machines' menu, and then backups (from memory too as I don't have a Veeam I can connect to). Here you will find your backup jobs and you will have a 'delete from disk' option on their restore points. This way the Veeam DB will be aware of the deletion. Also in your case knowing that you kept the full backup you could be able to run a new incremental job without having to do another full backup or even a new job.
Install Vib File
I would try to re-scan the target repository and re-launch the existing job. I deleted all the.vib files from the repository manually leaving only the.vbk file. Then in Veam GUI, i deleted the job from disk. It ran a full backup and now i got a new.vbk file. However, it created a new folder in the repository (see screenshot, e.g. The folder above.de 11 was the original backup folder where I had left the initial.vbk file.
I just thought it would overwrite that folder and place the new.vbk file in there. So now I am thinking about deleting the folder above.de 11, and renaming.de 11 to.de 1. If I do that, would it effect the backup job? Or, would I need to do this from the GUI? Thanks all, I got my backup chain back by recreating the chain. However, I got a question about Restore points.
I set a backup job to do a full backup followed by incremental (see below). For the retention policy, I set the restore points for 3 days (see below). My understanding of this configuration is that Veeam will create a full backup (vbk), followed by two incremental backup (vib), and should not exceed three total backup. In other words, after three backups, it should start overwriting itself. Is that how the restore points work?
In my case, I am getting more than three backups that piled on within the job. Can someone explain why it is not overwriting?