Backup Copy Retention Options

[mmisa]

Hello,

I'm confused by the options within the Backup Copy\Target page. I'm doing daily backups of multiple backup jobs to a dedupe appliance offsite and was wondering how the Backup Copy job\Retention Policy option with days (or restore points) differs from the option to "Keep certain full backups longer for archival purposes". If I select 7 days for the Retention Policy box, are those daily backup copies part of the archival backup restore points or completely separate? I'm looking to have 7 dailies at both locations, then begin the archival process offsite of having 3 weekly backups (for a span of 1 month), then 11 monthly backups, then 1 yearly. That's a total of 15 restore points, so how does the Retention Policy option of 7 days factor into this? Thanks for the assistance.

[PetrM]

Hello,

These are two different options that work independently on each other: "Retention policy" defines the number of restore points for short-term retention and "Keep certain full backups longer for archival purposes" allows you to configure long-term retention policy.

If you select 7 days in "Retention policy" box, you'll keep restore points created during the last 7 days within your "short-term" chain. The desired number of GFS points (in your case 3 weekly, 11 monthly and 1 yearly) can be configured separately.

Thanks!

[mmisa]

Thank you for this explanation and the accompanying links. What you stated makes sense. I appreciate the quick, thorough response!