Retention Concept
"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.
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.
Retention Rules
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 Protected Item will override 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; 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:
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
Protected Item Retention
In the Retention section of the Protected Item, you can configure a retention policy to apply when backing up this Protected Item to a specific Storage Vault. If no policy is configured for a specific Storage Vault, the default retention policy will apply.
The retention section will display (default) to indicate that the Storage Vault default rules apply, Keep (X rules) to indicate that specific Protected Item retention rules have been applied.
If a Protected Item is removed, or has its retention rules removed, then the Storage Vault retention rules will take precedence once more, and the data associated with the Protected Item will be kept, or removed, in accordance with the Storage Vault retention rules.
Retention Pass
When you apply retention rules, you are performing a "retention pass". A "retention pass" is the act of cleaning up data from the Storage Vault that exceeds the configured retention policy.
During a retention pass, the desktop application 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.
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