Monthly schedule and Retention

Monthlies are always the first backup after the month rolls over. Generally the 1st but if you run a new client's initial backup on the 17th, for example, that backup will be tagged yearly, monthly, weekly and daily.

Also, I'd recommend setting the weekly and yearly settings to match the next lower retention setting. Higher tags always override lower ones (e.g. the monthly retention will be applied on the first of the month even if it's shorter than the weekly retention).

So let's say i register a brand new client on 4/25/14, its first backup will be tagged DWMY. This backup will expire in 3 month (according to my retention policy). When is the next backup going to be tagged as monthly ? Is it going to be on 5/1/14 or 5/25/14 ?

The backup on 5/1/14 will be tagged as monthly.

My retention requirement is to keep 35 dailies and 3 monthlies. What would you configure differently knowing my retention requirements ?

The yearly retention always overrides the monthly retention, the monthly retention always overrides the weekly retention, and so on. If yearlies are set to be retained for 2 days, the yearly backup will expire after two days instead of 3 months even though it's also a monthly.

I'd recommend that you explicitly set the weekly retention to 35 days and the yearly retention to 3 months.

Ian Anderson wrote: Monthlies are always the first backup after the month rolls over. Generally the 1st but if you run a new client's initial backup on the 17th, for example, that backup will be tagged yearly, monthly, weekly and daily.

Ian,

So let's say i register a brand new client on 4/25/14, its first backup will be tagged DWMY. This backup will expire in 3 month (according to my retention policy). When is the next backup going to be tagged as monthly ? Is it going to be on 5/1/14 or 5/25/14 ?

Also, I'd recommend setting the weekly and yearly settings to match the next lower retention setting. Higher tags always override lower ones (e.g. the monthly retention will be applied on the first of the month even if it's shorter than the weekly retention).

sorry but i am not following you. My retention requirement is to keep 35 dailies and 3 monthlies. What would you configure differently knowing my retention requirements ?

Thank you Ian.

Ian Anderson wrote:
The yearly retention always overrides the monthly retention, the monthly retention always overrides the weekly retention, and so on. If yearlies are set to be retained for 2 days, the yearly backup will expire after two days instead of 3 months even though it's also a monthly.

I'd recommend that you explicitly set the weekly retention to 35 days and the yearly retention to 3 months.

I am still struggling on how to visualize it, will need to get a calendar out and mark it up .  So what benefits does it provide to set it that way versus what i currently have set ?

Thank you

The benefit is your yearlies don't vanish in a puff of logic

The bottom line is that you should always set up your retentions to look like this:

daily <= weekly <= monthly <= yearly

The yearly retention always overrides the monthly, weekly, and daily. If your yearly retention is set to 1 day, your backup on January 1st will expire on January 2nd even if your monthly retention is set to 7 years.

Ian,

i am sorry if i am being "dense" but i don't understand the thinking behind this. Can you point me to some documentation so i can read about it.

I believe this is covered in the Avamar Administration class but I don't see it in the Admin guide, unfortunately. I'll do my best to explain it differently.

So let's say you have the following advanced retention set up:

Daily => 15 days

Weekly => 4 weeks

Monthly => 7 days

Yearly => 7 years

Keep in mind that any backup on the Avamar system can only have a single expiration date assigned and that this expiration date is assigned at backup creation time.

When the software decides what expiry date to assign to the backup, it does something like this:

1. If this backup has the "yearly" tag, assign the expiration date as (create date + 7 years) and go to step 5. If this backup does not have the yearly tag, go to the next step.
2. If this backup has the "monthly" tag, assign the expiration date as (create date + 7 days) and go to step 5. If this backup does not have the monthly tag, go to the next step.
3. If this backup has the "weekly" tag, assign the expiration date as (create date + 4 weeks) and go to step 5. If this backup does not have the weekly tag, go to the next step.
4. If this backup has the "daily" tag, assign the expiration date as (create date + 15 days). Go to step 5.
5. Done assigning retention.

Let's say that it's Saturday, April 29 and a new client is running its initial backup.

Since this is the very first backup created by the client, it will be assigned all of the retention tags:

yearly,monthly,weekly,daily

Because the backup has a "yearly" tag, it will be assigned an expiration date of (create date + 7 years).

On Sunday, April 30, we roll over to a new week but the month and year are the same, so the backup will be assigned the following retention tags:

weekly,daily

Because the backup has a "weekly" tag, it will be assigned an expiration date of (create date + 4 weeks).

On Monday, May 1, we roll over to a new month, so the backup will be assigned the following retention tags:

monthly,daily

You might expect that the retention would be set to (create date + 14 days) but it won't. The "monthly" tag overrides the daily tag, so the retention will instead be set to (create date + 7 days). This is probably not what you want which is why it's recommended to configure advanced retention so that daily <= weekly <= monthly <= yearly.

I don't know if 0 counts which is why I recommended the change to your retention policy.

I get what you are saying

so if I have a backup that has the DWMY tag on it  - whatever Y is set to WINS.

so the first backup done in the year  might end up with all of those

where D is set to 35 days and Y is set to 2 days.

because Y is higher in rank he WINS and the the entire backup will expire in 2 days (does not matter that D wants to keep it for 35 days he is a lowly private and is out ranked by Y who is a Major)

and this applies to all backups

DW  = W wins  - so if D says 35 and W say 0  and W wins  the backup is not retained so I should set W to match D

DM  = M wins - so if D says 35 and M says 0 and M wins the backup so not reatined  so I should set M to match D.

That's a great analogy.

i see where you are going but here is what i see. My retention is 35D, 0W ..then why am i seeing these backups on Sunday being retained, they are tagged DW so why W which is set to 0 not winning ?

Okay, I wasn't sure whether 0 retention settings "counted" or not. Apparently they do not.

If you wanted to try an experiment on a test client, try setting W = 1 day and you should see the behaviour I described.

I'm sure the developers had a good reason to make it work the way it does but I don't know what that is. I'll have to ask one of the grizzled veterans some time.

Nope! It's an eternal mystery.

J.H. - end user wrote: I get what you are saying so if I have a backup that has the DWMY tag on it  - whatever Y is set to WINS. so the first backup done in the year  might end up with all of those where D is set to 35 days and Y is set to 2 days. because Y is higher in rank he WINS and the the entire backup will expire in 2 days (does not matter that D wants to keep it for 35 days he is a lowly private and is out ranked by Y who is a Major) and this applies to all backups DW  = W wins  - so if D says 35 and W say 0  and W wins  the backup is not retained so I should set W to match D DM  = M wins - so if D says 35 and M says 0 and M wins the backup so not reatined  so I should set M to match D.

J.H

As you can see from the screenshot above, my W is set to 0 and my weekly are not being purged (since i have 35 dailies i have an average 4 backups on Sunday that are marked as weekly). So what does it tell us, that value of 0 does not overwrite values of lower "rank" ?

Second question is, why would anyone set yearly value to 2 days ? Yearly means just that, yearly ..you specify how many years you want to keep that specific backup.  What am i missing ?

Thank you

haha, Avamar developers had to have a reason to make that available in the product, right ?