Retention lock script?

So before you can retention lock files on a Data Domain Restorer (DDR) you need to:

- License/configure/enable the retention lock feature

- Enable retention lock on required mtrees

- Set minimum and maximum retention periods for that mtree

The above is all covered in the DDOS administration guide so I won't go into more details here.

When you write a file to a DDR to physically retention lock that file you need to set its atime (access time) to a point in time in the future where the difference between current time and the modified atime is between the mtrees minimum and maximum retention periods. The atime then dictates the date/time until which the file is locked (and cannot be modified/deleted). Until the atime is modified in this way newly written files will not be retention locked even if retention lock is enabled for the corresponding mtree.

An example of using 'touch' on a linux system to modify a files atime:

# touch –a –t [expiry time] [file to be locked]

For example, to set atime to 07:05 on 8th June:

# touch -a -t 06080705 /data/col1/rl_test/testfile

A number of archiving applications (for example SourceOne/Enterprise Vault/Simpana and so on) can be configured to perform this atime modification automatically so that retention lock is automatically applied. A full list of supported applications is available at CompGuideApp

Note, however, that this functionality is generally not natively supported by general purpose backup/restore applications such as EMC Networker/Veritas NetBackup. If using one of these applications you would need to write your own bespoke scripts to retention lock files. You would also need to ensure that each files retention lock expires before the file is attempted to be expired/deleted by the backup application otherwise removal of the file will fail and even though it becomes unlocked it will be left on disk on the DDR indefinitely causing issues with capacity utilisation. The requirement for custom/bespoke scripts is detailed in the DDOS administration guide as follows:

DD Retention Lock is compatible with industry-standard, NAS-based Write-Once-Read-

Many (WORM) protocols, and integration is qualified with archive applications such as

Symantec Enterprise Vault, EMC SourceOne, EMC Cloud Tiering Appliance, EMC

DiskXtender, and so on. Customers using backup applications such as CommVault can

also develop custom scripts to use the EMC Data Domain Retention Lock software option.

If you need assistance developing these kind of scripts you can contact your account team who can then discuss a possible professional services engagement around this. Unfortunately this is not something Data Domain support can help with.

Some more general information on retention lock is available in the following KB article: https://support.emc.com/kb/492081

Thanks, James