Maintenance Settings

You can specify maintenance settings for a backup chain created with the Veeam Agent backup job. Maintenance operations help make sure that the backup chain remains valid and consistent.

Maintenance settings are available for the following types of Veeam Agent backup jobs that process Microsoft Windows computers:

  • Backup job managed by the backup server.
  • Backup job managed by Veeam Agent (backup policy).

To specify maintenance settings for the backup job:

  1. Click Advanced at one of the following steps of the wizard:
  • Storage — if you have selected to save backup files in a Veeam backup repository or cloud repository.
  • Local Storage — if you have selected to save backup files in a local storage of a Veeam Agent computer.
  • Shared Folder — if you have selected to save backup files in a network shared folder.
  1. In the Advanced Settings window, click the Maintenance tab.
  2. To periodically perform a health check for the latest restore point in the backup chain, in the Storage-level corruption guard section, select the Perform backup files health check check box. To specify the schedule for the health check, click Configure.

An automatic health check can help you avoid a situation where a restore point gets corrupted, making all dependent restore points corrupted, too. If during the health check Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows or Veeam Backup & Replication detect corrupted data blocks in the latest restore point in the backup chain (or the restore point before the latest one if the latest restore point is incomplete), it will start the health check retry and transport valid data blocks from the Veeam Agent computer to the target location. The transported data blocks are stored to a new backup file or the latest backup file in the backup chain, depending on the data corruption scenario.

For Veeam Agent backup jobs managed by the backup server, the health check process is similar to the one for backup jobs that process VMs. For more information, see the Health Check for Backup Files section in the Veeam Backup & Replication User Guide.

For Veeam Agent backup jobs managed by Veeam Agent, the health check process is the same as for Veeam Agent backup jobs configured directly on a Veeam Agent computer. For more information, see the Health Check for Backup Files section in the Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows User Guide.

NOTE

For object storage, Veeam Agent offers a special health check mechanism as default. To run the health check for object storage, enable the Perform backup files health check option in the Storage-level corruption guard section and specify the health check schedule.

You can also switch from the health check for object storage to the standard health check. To do so, select the Verify content of each object in backup check box in the backup job settings. Keep in mind that enabling this setting may result in additional charges from your object storage provider.

  1. [For backup jobs and policies targeted at a Veeam backup repository or cloud repository] Select the Remove deleted items data after check box and specify the number of days for which you want to keep the backup created with the backup job in the target location.
  • For backup jobs managed by the backup server, deleted items retention policy is similar to retention policy for deleted VMs. After you remove a protection group or individual computer from a Veeam Agent backup job, Veeam Backup & Replication will keep its data on the backup repository for the period that you have specified. When this period is over, backup data of this computer will be removed from the backup repository. For more information, see the Retention Policy for Deleted Items section in the Veeam Backup & Replication User Guide.
  • For backup jobs managed by Veeam Agent, if Veeam Agent does not create new restore points for the backup, the backup will remain in the target location for the period that you have specified. When this period is over, the backup will be removed from the target location. For more information, see the Retention Policy for Outdated Backups section in the Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows User Guide.

By default, the deleted items data retention period is 30 days. Do not set the deleted items retention period to 1 day or a similar short interval. In the opposite case, the backup job may work not as expected and remove data that you still require.

Maintenance SettingsNOTE

The Remove deleted items data after option is not available if you configure a backup job managed by Veeam Agent (backup policy) and have selected the Local storage or Shared folder option at the Destination step of the wizard.

  1. To periodically compact a full backup, select the Defragment and compact full backup file check box. To specify the schedule for the compact operation, click Configure. During the compact operation, data blocks from the full backup file are copied to a new empty file. As a result, the full backup file gets defragmented, and the speed of reading from and writing to the backup file increases.

NOTE

The Defragment and compact full backup file option is not available for backup jobs targeted at object storage.

The compact operation differs depending on the type of the backup job.

  • For Veeam Agent backup jobs managed by the backup server, the compact operation is similar to the compact operation performed for VM backup jobs. If the full backup file contains data blocks for deleted items (protection groups or individual computers that were removed from the backup job), Veeam Backup & Replication will remove these data blocks. For more information, see the Compact of Full Backup File section in the Veeam Backup & Replication User Guide.
  • For Veeam Agent backup jobs managed by Veeam Agent, if the full backup file contains data blocks for deleted drives, Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows will remove these data blocks. For more information, see the Compact of Full Backup File section in the Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows User Guide.

Maintenance SettingsNOTE

Consider the following:

  • If you want to periodically compact a full backup, you must make sure that you have enough free space in the target location. For the compact operation, the amount of free space must be equal to or more that the size of the full backup file.
  • In contrast to the compact operation for a VM backup, during compact of a full Veeam Agent backup file, Veeam Backup & Replication does not perform the data take out operation. If the full backup file contains data for a computer that has only one restore point and this restore point is older than 7 days, Veeam Backup & Replication will not extract data for this computer to a separate full backup file.

Maintenance Settings