proxmox-backup/docs/maintenance.rst

Maintenance Tasks
=================

.. _maintenance_pruning:

Pruning
-------

Prune lets you specify which backup snapshots you want to keep. The
following retention options are available:

``keep-last <N>``
  Keep the last ``<N>`` backup snapshots.

``keep-hourly <N>``
  Keep backups for the last ``<N>`` hours. If there is more than one
  backup for a single hour, only the latest is retained.

``keep-daily <N>``
  Keep backups for the last ``<N>`` days. If there is more than one
  backup for a single day, only the latest is retained.

``keep-weekly <N>``
  Keep backups for the last ``<N>`` weeks. If there is more than one
  backup for a single week, only the latest is retained.

  .. note:: Weeks start on Monday and end on Sunday. The software
     uses the `ISO week date`_ system and handles weeks at
     the end of the year correctly.

``keep-monthly <N>``
  Keep backups for the last ``<N>`` months. If there is more than one
  backup for a single month, only the latest is retained.

``keep-yearly <N>``
  Keep backups for the last ``<N>`` years. If there is more than one
  backup for a single year, only the latest is retained.

The retention options are processed in the order given above. Each option
only covers backups within its time period. The next option does not take care
of already covered backups. It will only consider older backups.

Unfinished and incomplete backups will be removed by the prune command, unless
they are newer than the last successful backup. In this case, the last failed
backup is retained.

Prune Simulator
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

You can use the built-in `prune simulator <prune-simulator/index.html>`_
to explore the effect of different retention options with various backup
schedules.

Manual Pruning
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

.. image:: images/screenshots/pbs-gui-datastore-content-prune-group.png
  :target: _images/pbs-gui-datastore-content-prune-group.png
  :align: right
  :alt: Prune and garbage collection options

To manually prune a specific backup group, you can use
``proxmox-backup-client``'s ``prune`` subcommand, discussed in
:ref:`backup-pruning`, or navigate to the **Content** tab of the datastore and
click the scissors icon in the **Actions** column of the relevant backup group.

Prune Schedules
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

To prune on a datastore level, scheduling options can be found under the
**Prune & GC** tab of the datastore. Here you can set retention settings and
edit the interval at which pruning takes place.

.. image:: images/screenshots/pbs-gui-datastore-prunegc.png
  :target: _images/pbs-gui-datastore-prunegc.png
  :align: right
  :alt: Prune and garbage collection options


Retention Settings Example
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

The backup frequency and retention of old backups may depend on how often data
changes and how important an older state may be in a specific workload.
When backups act as a company's document archive, there may also be legal
requirements for how long backup snapshots must be kept.

For this example, we assume that you are doing daily backups, have a retention
period of 10 years, and the period between backups stored gradually grows.

- **keep-last:** ``3`` - even if only daily backups, an admin may want to create
  an extra one just before or after a big upgrade. Setting keep-last ensures
  this.

- **keep-hourly:** not set - for daily backups this is not relevant. You cover
  extra manual backups already, with keep-last.

- **keep-daily:** ``13`` - together with keep-last, which covers at least one
  day, this ensures that you have at least two weeks of backups.

- **keep-weekly:** ``8`` - ensures that you have at least two full months of
  weekly backups.

- **keep-monthly:** ``11`` - together with the previous keep settings, this
  ensures that you have at least a year of monthly backups.

- **keep-yearly:** ``9`` - this is for the long term archive. As you covered the
  current year with the previous options, you would set this to nine for the
  remaining ones, giving you a total of at least 10 years of coverage.

We recommend that you use a higher retention period than is minimally required
by your environment; you can always reduce it if you find it is unnecessarily
high, but you cannot recreate backup snapshots from the past.


.. _maintenance_gc:

Garbage Collection
------------------

You can monitor and run :ref:`garbage collection <client_garbage-collection>` on the
Proxmox Backup Server using the ``garbage-collection`` subcommand of
``proxmox-backup-manager``. You can use the ``start`` subcommand to manually
start garbage collection on an entire datastore and the ``status`` subcommand to
see attributes relating to the :ref:`garbage collection <client_garbage-collection>`.

This functionality can also be accessed in the GUI, by navigating to **Prune &
GC** from the top panel of a datastore. From here, you can edit the schedule at
which garbage collection runs and manually start the operation.


.. _maintenance_verification:

Verification
------------

.. image:: images/screenshots/pbs-gui-datastore-verifyjob-add.png
  :target: _images/pbs-gui-datastore-verifyjob-add.png
  :align: right
  :alt: Adding a verify job

Proxmox Backup Server offers various verification options to ensure that backup
data is intact. Verification is generally carried out through the creation of
verify jobs. These are scheduled tasks that run verification at a given interval
(see :ref:`calendar-event-scheduling`). With these, you can also set whether
already verified snapshots are ignored, as well as set a time period, after
which snapshots are checked again. The interface for creating verify jobs can be
found under the **Verify Jobs** tab of the datastore.

.. Note:: It is recommended that you reverify all backups at least monthly, even
  if a previous verification was successful. This is because physical drives
  are susceptible to damage over time, which can cause an old, working backup
  to become corrupted in a process known as `bit rot/data degradation
  <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_degradation>`_. It is good practice to
  have a regularly recurring (hourly/daily) verification job, which checks new
  and expired backups, then another weekly/monthly job that will reverify
  everything. This way, there will be no surprises when it comes to restoring
  data.

Aside from using verify jobs, you can also run verification manually on entire
datastores, backup groups or snapshots. To do this, navigate to the **Content**
tab of the datastore and either click *Verify All* or select the *V.* icon from
the **Actions** column in the table.

.. _maintenance_notification:

Notifications
-------------

Proxmox Backup Server can send you notification emails about automatically
scheduled verification, garbage-collection and synchronization tasks results.

By default, notifications are sent to the email address configured for the
`root@pam` user. You can instead set this user for each datastore.

.. image:: images/screenshots/pbs-gui-datastore-options.png
  :align: right
  :alt: Datastore Options

You can also change the level of notification received per task type, the
following options are available:

* Always: send a notification for any scheduled task, independent of the
  outcome

* Errors: send a notification for any scheduled task that results in an error

* Never: do not send any notification at all