Backup retention settings

[siili]

I have backups to iSCSI that are reaching capacity of the destination and don't see any settings like in the documentation for automatically deleting old backups. This is a common problem for VSS and rsync grandfather, father, son backups. I'm looking for documentation that shows how to configure backups to back up. I'm using v8.3 for this VSS/iSCSI job.

Regards,
David Koski

[Stuart]

Hi David,

It's Stuart here from the BackupAssist team, thanks for your post.

When it comes to schemes such as Grandfather/Father/Son, it's pre-configured to keep a specific number of backups (as per the theory behind those types of schemes). For Grandfather/Father/Son you will need enough space to hold the 23 versions required to complete the data retention.

Monday - Friday (5)
Week 1 - Week 5 (5)
Monthly (12)
Year (1)

These will then be overwritten when the next backup for that specific folder is required.

If you don't have the space to store these types of schemes, then I'd advise you to change the scheme you're using to Most Recent Full as it's more fluid as it's not relying on keeping a specific amount of history. Doing so will give you the retention options which you've seen in the documentation.

Hopefully this information helps.