PBS does not delete backups, even if the retention policy matches

[aifiedler]

Hi,

we are running a PBS server and have the following retention policy:



The problem is that backups from May 2022 still exist and they are not being deleted. The VM itself has been moved onto another Proxmox Cluster,
but this shouldn't make any difference because PBS does not know what VMs exist on the cluster.

Am I right with this assumption?

 

[Matthias.]

I can think of 2 things:
Is the backup marked as protected?
How many backups newer than May 2022 exist, and at which dates? E.g if these are less than 15, it will count towards the weekly.

 

[aifiedler]

The backups are not marked as protected. I thought about that too but it is not the case.

This is the list of backups, starting from May 2022, going all the way to November 2022.

 

[Matthias.]

Well, count them
You have exactly 7 daily, 8 weekly, and 2 monthly backups, with the backup from may being the oldest monthly backup.

 

[aifiedler]

Well, count them
You have exactly 7 daily, 8 weekly, and 2 monthly backups, with the backup from may being the oldest monthly backup.

Thanks, it was a misunderstanding. The initial thought was that PBS will keep Backups from the last 7 days, last 8 weeks
and last two months. But that doesn't make any sense.

 

[Matthias.]

Yes, it can be a bit confusing at first.
Maybe the https://pbs.proxmox.com/docs/prune-simulator/ helps visualizing how it works.

 

[aifiedler]

Yes, it can be a bit confusing at first.
Maybe the https://pbs.proxmox.com/docs/prune-simulator/ helps visualizing how it works.

But does that mean that the backup from May will never be deleted? This vm for example has one Backup still from May, but others don't and they are existed back in May.

 

[Matthias.]

If no more backups are added, none of the existing ones will be deleted.
I don't know which backups your other VMs have/had, so I can't comment on them.