You can enforce days-based retention by enabling the EnableDaysOnlyRetention additional setting.
Note
By default, this setting is disabled.
Prior to Commvault Platform Release 2023E, retention of jobs was tied with cycles, and aging of jobs was sometimes unpredictable for customers who were not aware of the concepts of cycles. Therefore, days-based retention was introduced in Commvault Platform Release 2023E.
By using days-based retention, the retention of jobs is based on the number of days configured in the storage plan or storage policy copy. Retention of jobs will become cleaner and more predictable.
How It Works
After enabling the EnableDaysOnlyRetention additional setting at the CommCell level and at the client/client group level, the system retains jobs as follows:
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If the retention is X days, then any job older than X days will be deleted.
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Deleted jobs are hidden from the Command Center views. In other views, they are displayed as "Pending Consolidation" in the Pruning Status column in the Backup Job History tab.
Note
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By enabling days-based retention, the system will no longer follow cycle-level retention. Retention will be based only on the number of days configured in the storage plan.
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Deleted jobs can be viewed in the CommCell Console when the option to show aged jobs is selected.
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Once the system runs a synthetic full backup and media consolidation is completed, these jobs will no longer be tracked by the system.
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Browse and restore cannot be performed on deleted jobs.
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Deleted jobs are not available for recovery.
Examples
The system deletes jobs based on storage policy copy retention.
For example, storage policy SP1 has three copies:
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Copy1 retention – n1 days and x cycles
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Copy2 retention – n2 days and y cycles
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Copy3 retention – n3 days and z cycles
Data aging deletes backup jobs after max (n1, n2, n3) days.
In the case of selective copy, suppose storage policy SP1 has two copies:
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Copy1 (Synchronous) – 10 days and X days
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Copy2 (Selective copy) – 365 days and Y cycles
The system deletes incremental backups after 10 days.
The system deletes full and synthetic full backups only after 365 days.
Note
The system does not delete backup jobs if any storage policy or storage plan copies are configured with infinite retention.
Support
This feature is supported for the following agents:
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File System
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File System under NAS
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File System with block-level backups
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Laptop (only regular/classic laptop for which ctree index is used)
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Big Data Apps
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VSA
Note
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This feature is not supported by Indexing Version 1. It is only supported by Indexing Version 2.
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This feature is supported for backupset and subclient level indexes.
Procedure
Note
For information about adding an additional setting from the CommCell Console, see Adding an Additional Setting from the CommCell Console.
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Enable the EnableDaysOnlyRetention additional setting (with a value of True) at the CommServe server level.
Additional setting
Category
Type
Value
CommServDB.GxGlobalParam
Boolean
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True: Enables days-based retention
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False: Disables days-based retention
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Enable the EnableDaysOnlyRetention additional setting (with a value of True) at the client or client group level.
Additional setting
Category
Type
Value
CommServDB.Client
Boolean
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True: Enables days-based retention
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False: Disables days-based retention
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For VSA, enable the EnableDaysOnlyRetention additional setting (with a value of True) on the following entities:
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Hypervisor client
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The automatically created VM server group (that is, the VM server group that has the same name as the hypervisor), or the custom VM server group, or a specific VM client.
Additional setting
Category
Type
Value
CommServDB.Client
Boolean
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True: Enables days-based retention
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False: Disables days-based retention
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