How to remove missing restore points from Veeam Cloud Connect backups

Challenge

You need to remove missing restore points from a cloud backup chain. The Forget and Remove operations that are available for local backup chains are not available for cloud backup chains.

A restore point can become unavailable, for example, if the backup repository is not available or a backup file is missing in the backup chain. Backup chains that contain missing restore points get corrupted — you cannot perform backup or restore VM data from the missing restore point and restore points that depend on the missing restore point.

Cause

The Forget and Remove operations are not available for cloud backups, by design.

Solution

The supported solution to remove missing restore points is to run an active full backup or re-seed the cloud backup.

You can also use the following workaround.

THIS WORKAROUND IS NOT SUPPORTED BY VEEAM TECHNICAL SUPPORT. USE IT AT YOUR OWN RISK.
 

Prerequisites:

 

• You need access to both Service Provider (SP) and tenant Veeam backup consoles.
• You need a second SP Veeam backup server (in addition to the original SP Veeam backup server and tenant Veeam backup server) where the metadata file of the affected backup will be imported. The second Veeam backup server can be used on the tenant side instead of the SP side, but in this case, SP has to provide the tenant with the original .vbm file and the list of storage files on a repository.
• You need one local repository connected to the second Veeam backup server.
• You need to back up original .vbm file by copying it to another folder outside the tenant quota.
• If the backup is encrypted, you need to know the password of the backup.
• To avoid any possible issues at steps 4–5, we recommend to use Veeam Backup & Replication version 9.5.4.2753 or higher in both tenant and SP installations.

Steps:

 

1. Connect to the tenant Veeam backup console.
2. Open Home – > Jobs.
3. Find your cloud job that processes the backup you want to modify, right-click the job and select Disable. The option can be greyed-out if the job is not scheduled to run at some particular time.
4. Open the Home –> Backups –> Cloud view.
5. Press and hold the [CTRL] key and right-click the backup you want to modify.
6. Select the Remove from configuration option.
7. Connect to the SP infrastructure.

Perform the following steps on the SP side until you see a notice to connect to the tenant infrastructure.

8.  Locate tenant quota in the SP repository used for storing tenant backups.

           Example:

The path to repository root is C:\VeeamBackup\. You can check this path in Backup Infrastructure –> Backup Repositories in the SP Veeam Backup & Replication console.
The tenant name is “Tenant1”.
The cloud job name is “CloudBackup”.
The path to tenant backup in the quota will be: C:\VeeamBackup\Tenant1\CloudBackup.

You can perform the following steps on the tenant side if the second Veeam backup server is deployed there and the tenant gets the required .vbm file from its SP.

 

9. Copy the cloud backup metadata file (.vbm file) from the tenant quota to the second Veeam backup server.
10. Put the .vbm file in the root folder of the local repository connected to the second Veeam backup server.
11. Open the Backup Infrastructure –> Backup Repositories view in the Veeam backup console of the second Veeam backup server.
12.  Find the local repository in the list, right-click it and select Rescan.
13. After the rescan process completes, you will see the imported backup in the Home –> Backups –> Disk (Imported) node. 
    If the backup is encrypted, you will see the backup in the Home –> Backups –> Disk (Encrypted) node. Find the backup in the list, right-click it, select Specify the password and use the latest password specified in the cloud job settings.
14. Right-click the imported backup and select Properties.
    All unavailable restore points will have red marks. Your goal is to remove the restore points that are missing on the cloud repository. Compare the list of points in the backup chain on the original repository and find the missing restore points. If there are some points dependent on the missing point, they must also be deleted from .vbm.
15. In the Backup Properties window, find the point you want to remove from .vbm.
16. Right-click the point and select the Forget option.
    If there are any points that depend on the missing point, select the first missing point and choose Forget –> This and dependent backups.
17. After the operation completes, copy the .vbm file from the local repository on the second Veeam backup server back to the tenant job folder in the tenant quota on the cloud repository.
    If the modification was made on the second Veeam backup server on the tenant side, pass the modified .vbm file to the SP.
    If the cloud quota for the tenant is created on a scale-out backup repository (SOBR), the metadata file should be copied to tenant job folders on every extent of SOBR.
18. Remove the backup from configuration on the second Veeam backup server on the SP side and do not forget to delete the .vbm file from the local repository.
19. Connect to the tenant Veeam backup console.
20. Open the Backup Infrastructure -> Backup Repositories view.
21. In the inventory pane, find the cloud repository where the affected backup is stored, right-click it and select Rescan.
22. During the rescan operation, in the statistics window, you will see that the backup was imported.
    The modified backup should appear in the Home –> Backups –> Cloud node in the tenant Veeam backup console.
    If you open the backup properties, you will see that the points removed at previous steps are no longer in the backup file list.
23. Open Home –> Jobs and find the cloud job associated with this backup.
24. Right-click the job, select Edit, proceed to the Storage step of the wizard and select Map backup.
25. Select the modified cloud backup from the cloud repository. Then, click OK to finish mapping.
26. Save the settings and enable the job. Then run it or wait for the job to run upon schedule.
    When the job runs after modifications for the first time, it is supposed to create an incremental restore point and back up data that has changed since the last restore point in the cloud backup chain was created.
27. Check the list of restore points on the repository and in the backup properties. If some points are absent in properties but exist on the repository, you can remove these files from the repository to free up the quota space.