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Retention (Storage Vault)
"Retention" is the concept of classifying backed-up data to determine what data should be kept and what data can be safely removed in order to free up disk space. For instance, you may choose to keep backed-up data from the last 30 days or all data from the last 100 backup jobs. Keep in mind any data older than this is unlikely to be useful and can be safely removed.
Retention Pass
After each backup job, a "retention pass" runs for the Storage Vault. You can also run a retention pass for a Storage Vault on demand, by right-clicking the Storage Vault within the eazyBackup application.
During a retention pass, eazyBackup looks at each backed-up job within the Storage Vault and determines whether it meets the retention policy. If the retention policy states that the backed-up job can be safely removed, the backed-up job is removed from the Storage Vault. Once all backed-up jobs are checked against the retention policy, any data chunks that are no longer referenced by a backed-up job can then be pruned to save disk space.
Preferences
eazyBackup allows you to configure retention for a Storage Vault as well as for a Protected Item / Storage Vault pair.
The retention rule for the pair will be used in preference to the retention rule for the Storage Vault. The retention rule for the Storage Vault is therefore only applied when:
- there is no overridden retention rule for the Protected Item / Storage Vault pair; or
- the Protected Item is unknown, deleted, or belongs to a different eazyBackup user account
Retention policies
There are two categories of retention policy:
- A policy that keeps all data forever, and
- A policy that keeps data as long as it falls within any of a set of configurable ranges. You can combine multiple ranges to create a more complex policy.
Retention ranges
A retention range is a time period or job count during which a backup job should be kept.
The following ranges are available:
Range | Parameters | Description |
---|---|---|
Last [...] backups |
Specify a number of backups to keep. | If the backup job was within the last X backups, then the backup job will be kept |
All backups in the last [...] |
Specify a number of days, weeks, and/or months. | If the backup job occurred recently within the specified range, then the backup job will be kept |
All backups newer than a specific date |
Specify a specific date. | If the backup job occurred after that specific date, then the backup job will be kept |
One backup each day, for the last [...] days |
Specify a number of days. | eazyBackup will keep the single first backup job from each of that most recent days |
One backup each week, for the last [...] weeks |
Specify a number of weeks, and a day of the week | eazyBackup will keep the single first backup job that occurred on that day of the week, for each of that number of most recent weeks |
One backup each month, for the last [...] months |
Specify a number of months, and a calendar date | eazyBackup will keep the single first backup job that occurred on that calendar date, for each of that number of most recent months |