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Days-Based Retention

By default, days-based retention is disabled. However, you can enable it by using the EnableDaysOnlyRetention additional setting (procedure shown below).

Prior to Commvault Platform Release 2024E (11.36), 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 2024E.

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

When days-based retention is enabled, the system retains jobs as follows:

  • If the retention is X days, then any job older than X days will be deleted.

  • Deleted jobs are displayed as "Pending Consolidation" in the Pruning Status column in the Backup Job History tab.

  • Even if jobs are deleted because of the Days Only Retention setting, full and synth full backups continue to be included in the capacity calculation under Capacity Licenses in the License Summary Report.

Note

  • When days-based retention is enabled, the system does not follow cycle-level retention. Retention is based only on the number of days configured in the storage plan.

  • Beginning Commvault Platform Release 2024E (11.36), days-based retention at the copy level is supported. Backup jobs are deleted from individual storage policy copies based on the retention rules of those copies.

  • If a backup job is deleted from a copy, the job’s status is displayed as "Pending Consolidation" at that copy level.

  • Deleted jobs can be viewed in the CommCell Console when the option to show aged jobs is selected.

  • Once the system runs a synthetic full backup and media consolidation is completed, these jobs will no longer be tracked by the system.

  • Browse and restore cannot be performed on deleted jobs.​

  • Deleted jobs are not available for recovery.

Example

Storage policy SP1 has three copies with the following retention rules:

  • Copy1: 10 days and X cycles.

    Backup jobs will be deleted from Copy1 after 10 days.

  • Copy2: 20 days and Y cycles.

    Backup jobs will be deleted from Copy2 after 20 days.

  • Copy3: 30 days and Z cycles, and extended retention (retain all full backups for 365 days).

    Full backups will be deleted from Copy3 after 365 days, but all other jobs (that is, incremental backups) will be deleted after 30 days.

Note

If a copy has infinite retention, then backup jobs are not deleted from that copy.

Support

This feature is supported for the following agents:

  • Big Data Apps

  • File System

  • File System under NAS

  • File System with block-level backups

  • Laptop (only regular/classic laptop for which ctree index is used)

  • VSA

Note

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.

  • Enable the EnableDaysOnlyRetention additional setting (with a value of True) at the CommServe server level.

    Note

    If you enable this additional setting at the CommCell level, then it will be enabled for all clients in that CommCell.

    Additional setting

    Category

    Type

    Value

    EnableDaysOnlyRetention

    CommServDB.GxGlobalParam

    Boolean

    • True: Enables days-based retention

    • False: Disables days-based retention

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