Snapshot-based retention policy - ELI5

[pboucher]

I read the Retention Policy article located at https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/vbo36 ... tml?ver=50. The problem is it's worded in such a way that reading the contract to sell my soul to the Devil is easier. Also, the example listed makes it harder to understand.

I want to make sure I understand this correctly.

Let's take a snapshot-based retention policy of one month.

On the 1st day, all items from all mailboxes are backed up, including an email that was received 5 years ago. That email wasn't touched, moved, clicked on, nor considered as read during these 5 years.
At the 40th day, will the 5 year old email will still be recoverable from VBO?

Thank you for your answers.

[Gostev]

With snapshot-based retention, item age does not have a play at all. Your restore points are effectively snapshots of the state of your mailbox as of given date. Anything that was present in the mailbox at the time when the backup is taken will be stored. Skipping anything at all would subsequently make it impossible to restore the mailbox to the selected state, which is against the promise of this retention type.

Snapshot-based retention is best compared to image-level backup of regular machines. When the specific guest OS file was created has no play there either, as what is backed up is the entire image as-is.

[Mike Resseler]

Anton is correct and his comparison is probably the easiest to use for administrators that are used to VM type of backups.

Item-level is a specific one that exists in the application-based world of backup. In a lot of cases, the regulation for Company X (whether this is a country legal thing or something else) says that you need to keep items (created/ last modified) for X amount of time. After that, it should be removed from the backup. There are legal reasons for this (such as the fact that nobody can find "proof" after X years).

So discuss with your legal team/ C-levels what the best approach is in your case. A company does not always want to be able to find an email of 15 years old in their backups when they are only required to keep it for 7 for example.