Is there a way to use advanced retention to extend retention of replicated backups in Avamar?

I was afraid that was going to be the answer, any ETA on Avamar 7?

Mark Nixon | Arraya Solutions

Certified EMC Expert

Senior Solutions Engineer

523 Plymouth Road, Suite 212, Plymouth Meeting, PA 19462

Cell: 610-368-5167 | Support: 610-684-8645

“Do not let the perfect be the enemy of the good.”

Soon.

This is non-trivial in Avamar 6.1 and requires some kind of scripting on the target or configuration of separate replication streams with the appropriate expiredelta.

There are significant improvements to replication management coming in Avamar 7 -- especially with regard to differing retentions on source and target -- so it may be worth waiting for the release.

Thanks I kinda figured I was going to have to go the scripting route which would be a bit out of scope for the present engagement. The customer may wait for Avamar 7 to implement this change using the built in functionality, while not exactly what they were looking for they may decide it meets their needs. The product release is public tomorrow.

Mark Nixon | Arraya Solutions

Certified EMC Expert

Senior Solutions Engineer

523 Plymouth Road, Suite 212, Plymouth Meeting, PA 19462

Cell: 610-368-5167 | Support: 610-684-8645

“Do not let the perfect be the enemy of the good.”

At our shop, we accomplish this by making the initial backup with the longer retention settings, which all replicate to the target grid with all their tags and expiration dates, then cron a script on the source grid to expire all backups that are older than 30 days. If you're good with Linux, and good with scripting, look into the delete-snapups utility in the /bin directory...

Marty

Can you please expand upon your comments regarding multiple replication tasks and the expire delta option? In my experience running a backup job with the expire delta option doesn't change the retention on backups that have already replicated.

In my experience running a backup job with the expire delta option doesn't change the retention on backups that have already replicated.

You are absolutely correct. Backups won't be modified by the replicator once they have been written to the target.

Essentially you'd have to set up several replication streams -- one that selected Yearly backups and replicated them with a delta, then one for Monthly backups, possibly with a different delta, Weekly backups with yet another delta, etc.. It would be pretty scary trying to manage all those replication streams in Avamar 6.1. The replication management interface in Avamar 7 would make this much easier.

It wouldn't alter the existing backups but it would allow you to set the appropriate retentions for future replications.

Well, setting up multiple streams is the easy part. It's making sure that backups are consistently done in the proper order for differing retention changes.

I've got 7.0 installed in our lab but haven't gotten a change to look at the replication enhancements yet.