Maintenance Settings

You can specify maintenance settings for the job if you have selected the Managed by backup server mode at the Job Mode step of the wizard.

To specify maintenance settings for the backup job:

1. Click Advanced at one of the following steps of the wizard:

• Local Storage — if you have selected to save backup files on a local storage of a Veeam Agent computer.
• Shared Folder — if you have selected to save backup files in a network shared folder.

• Storage — if you have selected to save backup files in a Veeam backup repository.

2. Click the Maintenance tab.
3. 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 and specify the time schedule for the health check.

An automatic health check can help you avoid a situation when a restore point gets corrupted, making all dependent restore points corrupted, too. If during the health check Veeam Backup & Replication detects 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 protected computer to the Veeam backup repository. 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 more information, see the Health Check for Backup Files section in Veeam Backup & Replication User Guide at: https://www.veeam.com/documentation-guides-datasheets.html.

4. Select the Remove deleted items data after check box and specify the number of days for which you want to keep backup data for protection groups or individual computers that were removed from the backup job. After you remove a computer from the 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 protected computer will be removed from the backup repository.

The retention period for deleted items data is useful if the job is configured to create active full backups or synthetic full backups with subsequent transform, and you want to make sure that the full backup does not include redundant data.

By default, the deleted items data retention period is 14 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.

For protection groups and computers removed from a Veeam Agent backup job, Veeam Backup & Replication offers the same retention policy as for deleted VMs. For more information, see the Retention Policy for Deleted VMs section in Veeam Backup & Replication User Guide at: https://www.veeam.com/documentation-guides-datasheets.html.

5. To periodically compact a full backup, select the Defragment and compact full backup file check box and specify the schedule for the compact operation.

During the compact operation, Veeam Backup & Replication creates a new empty file and copies to it data blocks from the full backup file. As a result, the full backup file gets defragmented and the speed of reading and writing from/to the backup file increases.

If the full backup file contains data blocks for deleted items (protection groups or individual computers), Veeam Backup & Replication will remove these data blocks. For more information, see the Compact of Full Backup File section in Veeam Backup & Replication User Guide at: https://www.veeam.com/documentation-guides-datasheets.html.