Overview
A backup set is a combination of workload, backup content, and backup policy. A backup set is created for a server. You can associate a Windows/Linux server with multiple backup sets.
Scenarios in which an admin chooses to delete a backup set
If you are a cloud administrator, you can delete a backup set attached to your configured server. You may want to delete backup sets in the following situations:
When restoration of data from the restore points is no longer required.
When the end goal is server deletion/removal from the Phoenix UI. You cannot delete a server from the Phoenix console without deleting all the attached backup sets.
When the server was initially a file server and is now a virtual machine. This server was initially backed up as a file server and now needs to be backed up as a virtual machine. In this situation, you can delete the backup set if older restore points are not required.
When you have multiple backup sets, as an example, one backup set per drive letter, and one of those logical drives is removed from the server. In this case, you can delete backup sets that backed up the removed drive if older restore points are no longer required.
When a server has multiple backup sets with overlapping and duplicate content. We recommend consolidating all required content for backup in one content rule and remove the remaining content rules and backup sets.
When you created a content rule in error (For example, you selected Backup All Folders in the Content Rule) and backed up the data once, or the backup was half-way through when you realized that you didn't need this backup. You can delete this backup set and create a new one with the right configuration.
📝 Note
We recommend deleting the backup set in this scenario if the unwanted content has a large number of small files or the amount of data that will be backed up runs into terabytes.
When a backup set is deleted and recreated even with the same content rule, the next backup will run a full scan and will take longer.
What are the effects of deleting a backup set?
Deleting a backup set deletes all the restore points associated with the backup set.
Deleting a backup set will reduce Phoenix storage consumption. The effects may not be visible immediately because compaction of the deleted data may take some time.
Deleting a backup set reduces the credit utilization because credit utilization directly depends on the amount of Phoenix storage consumed.
⚠️ Warning
The deletion of a backup set is an irreversible action.
If minor changes are required in the backup set, we recommend editing the backup set instead of deleting the backup set and recreating it. To learn how to edit a backup set, see Edit a backup set.