Appropriate backup retention policy can ease the administrative burden of providing enough space for future backups to complete, while ensuring a known period of backups remain available for timely restores.

 

Backup retention settings allow to efficiently manage the space on CFAs and in the relevant replication targets. For this, you can adjust the settings globally and per client (whether it is a physical or a virtual) for backups stored either locally or offsite.

 

 

Backup retention settings for physical clients

 

The following retention settings are available for DR Image backups:

                                           

SettingAvailable optionsDefault value
Fullsseconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, quarters, years3 months
Differentialsseconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, quarters, years3 months
Incrementalsseconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, quarters, years3 months

 

 

 

Backup retention settings for virtual clients

 

The following retention settings are available for VM backups (VMware and Hyper-V):

                                                      

SettingAvailable optionsDefault value
Keep all backups for X days3, 7, 147
Keep last backup of the day for X week(s)1, 2, 4, 8, 144
Keep last backup of the week for X month(s)1, 3, 6, 126
Keep last backup of the month for X year(s)0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, forever1

 

 

The system records the last successful backup in a day, in a week, and in a month, and keep it for the given period of time.

   

NOTE

   

On CFAs with firmware version 6.16 or earlier, backup retention settings for virtual clients are different:

   

 

 

Default backup retention settings

 

These settings apply to all newly added clients by default, but you can override these later using individual client backup settings (see below).

 

To change the default retention settings:

 

  1. In the CFA Management Console, go to Jobs > Retention.  
  2. Change the settings as needed.  
  3. Click Apply in the lower part of the page, and then click ACTIVATE CONFIGURATION on the upper right.

   

NOTE

   

Since on CFAs with firmware version 6.16 or earlier, backup retention settings for virtual clients are different, global backup retention settings are different as well:

   

   

To use the latest backup retention settings, update the CFA firmware version to 6.17.

 

 

Client backup retention settings

 

These settings apply to a given client disregarding the default global settings.

 

To change retention settings for a client:

 

  1. In the CFA Management Console, go to Clients > Edit.  
  2. Click the desired client.  
  3. In the Job Retention and Offsite Job Retention groups, change the settings as needed.     

    NOTE
    Click Apply in the lower part of the page, and then click ACTIVATE CONFIGURATION on the upper right.

    If a virtual client was added before the CFA firmware version has been updated to 6.17, backup retention settings for this client remain as before (see NOTE in Backup retention settings for virtual clients above).

        

        

    To switch the client to use the latest backup retention settings, click Migrate.

        

    After migrating of the client, on the next retention scan, each existing backup will be checked against new settings, and will be either deleted or kept.

        

    Migration suggests the use of the predefined automatic transition algorithms that will allow to keep restore points even longer, but with less granularity.