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Decommissioning Servers

  • 4 October 2021
  • 3 replies
  • 1685 views

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I have servers (VMs and servers with agents) that are being decommissioned.  The request from my boss is to do a full backup and keep it after the server is deleted.  The VMs are in a subclient and I am worried that their backups will be deleted if the VM is removed from the subclient.  Similarly, I am concerned the backups will be lost if a SQL agent is removed.  I am looking for some documents  or advice that can guide me through this process of removing a server from the backup schedule while retaining the past backups.  Then comes the question “How would you restore a backup of a decommissioned server?”

Any help for this newbie is appreciated.

Best answer by Mike Struening RETIRED

Hi @jego , appreciate the question!

We have the whole procedure documented here:

https://documentation.commvault.com/11.24/expert/5948_decommissioning_server_or_laptop_from_backups.html

Essentially, you release the license, and we keep at least the last full (by default).  In every aspect of CV, you’ll see the default behavior is one of caution and ‘better safe than sorry’.

You can restore the job regardless (the job will be able to restore to any licensed server out of place).

What I would also recommend is manually retaining the jobs infinitely.  You’d hate to find out someone changed a default setting on how we retain deconfigured jobs and they age off.

Of course, keep this in mind as well:

https://documentation.commvault.com/11.24/expert/14024_how_can_job_still_be_pruned_when_it_is_manually_retained.html

Here’s the specific default setting I was referring to:

Retain last Full job of de-configured clients based on Extended Retention Rules

Definition: Specifies that for de-configured clients, the last full backup job will be retained for x number of days.

Where is the extended retention value set for the storage policy copy (that has First full backup of time period check box selected) associated with the de-configured client.

Default Value: 0

Range: 0 (disabled) or 1 (enabled)

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3 replies

Mike Struening
Vaulter
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Hi @jego , appreciate the question!

We have the whole procedure documented here:

https://documentation.commvault.com/11.24/expert/5948_decommissioning_server_or_laptop_from_backups.html

Essentially, you release the license, and we keep at least the last full (by default).  In every aspect of CV, you’ll see the default behavior is one of caution and ‘better safe than sorry’.

You can restore the job regardless (the job will be able to restore to any licensed server out of place).

What I would also recommend is manually retaining the jobs infinitely.  You’d hate to find out someone changed a default setting on how we retain deconfigured jobs and they age off.

Of course, keep this in mind as well:

https://documentation.commvault.com/11.24/expert/14024_how_can_job_still_be_pruned_when_it_is_manually_retained.html

Here’s the specific default setting I was referring to:

Retain last Full job of de-configured clients based on Extended Retention Rules

Definition: Specifies that for de-configured clients, the last full backup job will be retained for x number of days.

Where is the extended retention value set for the storage policy copy (that has First full backup of time period check box selected) associated with the de-configured client.

Default Value: 0

Range: 0 (disabled) or 1 (enabled)


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  • Author
  • Byte
  • 10 replies
  • October 6, 2021

Thank you Mike for your reply. This answers the question for clients that use agents.  What about VMs that are backed up by adding to the sub-client of a hypervisor?


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  • Vaulter
  • 4 replies
  • October 6, 2021

Hi Jego, 

 

As long as your retention is set correctly the Job history will not age. So whether you use extended retention (i.e. Pinned Jobs) or if you created a decom policy with forever retention, the job history should stay in tact. 

 

Which also brings up a second point, Job History is actually held in the backupset not the subclient. So whether you delete the VM or the VM Subclient, as long as you don’t delete the Backupset (or the VSA Pseudo Client), the job history should remain in the Commserve.


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