O365 Retention policy

[Jonyrock]

Hi,
We use Veeam O365 V5 to backup the entire O365 (mailbox/SharePoint/teams ). We reached our license limit of 500 as Veeam allows for additional processing of its 10%, so now at 545 and having 5-year Snapshot-Based Retention on the azure blob.
I have the below queries.
1) If I clean up the users in office 365 will that make any impact on retention? I believe it should not be as we have 5-year Snapshot-Based Retention and we should be able to restore data even after three years, pls confirm
2) As of now retention policy is getting applied monthly do I need to change it to daily before I do clean up in office 365
3) After 30 Days can we reuse the license for cleaned-up mailboxes.

[Mike Resseler]

1) If you start to clean up users, then the licenses will be given free again after 30 days. The data however will NOT be removed. It remains there until the retention is over
2) Retention is being done daily
3) Correct

[Jonyrock]

Many thanks for your quick reply

[Mildur]

Small correction, it is 31 days without any backup, until the license will be free to use again.