Retention Policy for Quick Backups

When you perform a quick backup, Veeam Backup & Replication creates a single VM incremental restore point. Unlike a regular incremental restore point that contains data for all VMs in a job, single VM incremental restore point contains data only for a specific VM.

A single VM restore point is not regarded as a full-fledged restore point in the backup chain. From the retention policy perspective, a single VM restore point is grouped with a regular restore point following it. When Veeam Backup & Replication needs to delete a single VM restore point by retention, it waits for the next regular restore point to expire — that is Veeam Backup & Replication increases the retention by one restore point for some time. After the next regular restore point expires, Veeam Backup & Replication deletes two restore points at once.

If the backup chain is stored in a repository with the Use per-machine backup files option enabled, the number of the retention points increase in a different way. As a rule, the number of retention points increase by the number of VMs from this chain for which quick backup was performed. It applies to the reverse incremental and forward incremental backup chains.