When you create a backup plan and select a storage policy, you can choose to enable extended retention rules in addition to specifying a retention period.
Extended retention rules allow you to keep specific full (or synthetic full) backups for an additional period of time.
Note
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Each backup serves as a full recovery point for compliance and regulatory purposes. For disk and cloud storage, synthetic fulls function as a garbage collection process and do not create new recovery points.
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The extended retention rules do not apply to third-party command line backups. The user must configure days-based retention instead.
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Extended retention behavior for WORM storage depends on whether the storage pool uses deduplication:
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For a deduplicated WORM storage pool, extending retention isn't supported. You can't configure different extended retention periods for dependent copies. The retention configured for the Global Storage Pool applies to the dependent copies.
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For a non-deduplicated WORM storage pool, extended retention is supported, and you can use different retention periods.
If you require different retention periods with deduplicated WORM storage, use separate storage pools and copies for each retention period.
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An extended retention allows you to keep incrementals following a full backup jobs from a source copy when fulls are committed or synthetic fulls complete with errors.
Extended retention rules can be used in the following circumstances:
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If you have a single drive tape library
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If you want to create a hierarchical retention scheme (grandfather-father-son tape rotation)
Extended retention rules allow you to define three additional "extended" retention periods for full (or synthetic full) backups.
For example:
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You may want to retain your weekly full backups for 30 days.
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You may want to retain your monthly full backup for 90 days.
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You may want to retain your yearly full backup for 365 days.
A backup job will be selected for extended retention based on its start time. For example: If a backup job starts at 11:55 pm on August 31st and ends at 1 am on September 1st, then it will be selected as the last full backup for the month of August and will be picked up for extended retention.
In all other cases, we recommend you to use Auxiliary Copy for extended storage as it actually creates another physical copy of the data, thereby reducing the risk of data loss due to media failure.
Configure different retention periods for deduplicated WORM storage
To use different retention periods with deduplicated WORM storage, create a separate storage pool and copy for each retention period.
For example, if your retention requirements are:
| Backup frequency | Retention |
|---|---|
| Daily | 30 days |
| Weekly | 90 days |
| Monthly | 12 months |
Create the following storage pools:
| Storage pool | Retention |
|---|---|
| Daily pool | 30 days |
| Weekly pool | 90 days |
| Monthly pool | 12 months |
Use the daily pool for the primary copy. Create a weekly selective copy that uses the weekly pool and a monthly selective copy that uses the monthly pool.