How to Set Backup Retention - Complete Guide

Question: How long should I keep backups?

Answer: Use retention policy - never keep forever

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Understanding Backup Retention

Retention Options

Type	Typical Keep	Use Case
Daily	7 days	Recent recovery
Weekly	4 weeks	Point-in-time recovery
Monthly	3-6 months	Archive compliance
Yearly	1-2 years	Long-term archive

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How to Set Retention (Web UI)

Step-by-Step:

1. Edit Backup Job

• Go to Datacenter → Backup
• Click on job → Edit

2. Configure Retention Find these options:

• Keep Daily: 7 (keep 7 daily backups)
• Keep Weekly: 4 (keep 4 weekly backups)
• Keep Monthly: 3 (keep 3 monthly backups)

3. Save

• Click OK

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How to Set Retention (CLI)

# Set retention for backup job
vzdump --mode snapshot --vmid all --storage local \
  --prune-backup keep-daily=7,keep-weekly=4,keep-monthly=3

Prune Options Explained

Option	Description
keep-daily=7	Keep 7 daily backups
keep-weekly=4	Keep 4 weekly backups
keep-monthly=3	Keep 3 monthly backups

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How to Manually Clean Old Backups

Using find Command

# Delete backups older than 7 days
find /var/lib/vz/dump -name "vzdump*.tar.*" -mtime +7 -delete
 
# Delete backups older than 30 days
find /var/lib/vz/dump -name "vzdump*.tar.*" -mtime +30 -delete

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Recommended Retention Policies

Home Lab

# Keep 3 daily, 2 weekly
keep-daily=3,keep-weekly=2

Small Business

# Keep 7 daily, 4 weekly, 3 monthly
keep-daily=7,keep-weekly=4,keep-monthly=3

Enterprise

# Keep 7 daily, 5 weekly, 12 monthly
keep-daily=7,keep-weekly=5,keep-monthly=12

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Keywords

retention how-to clean policy storage

Related Articles

• Backup
• How-To-Configure-Backup
• How-To-Backup-Storage

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