Retention Policies question

Hi Isandra,

     The greatest retention will be forced on the saveset.

Thank you so much !

Dear isandro,

I am quoting the excerpts from Networker 8.0 Administrator Guide for your understanding and in context to the discussion here

"

A retention policy can also be specified for a media pool. If the retention policy is

specified for a media pool as well as the client, the NetWorker software will be the longer

of the two policies.

Assigning a retention policy to a clone pool has special implications. When a retention

policy is specified in a clone pool, all save sets that are directed to the clone pool take on

the retention policy of the clone pool regardless of the retention policy of the save set

client. “Specifying browse and retention policies for clone data” on page 337 provides

more information.

When browse and retention policies are specified with a command line program, such as

save -w -y, the browse and retention policies are taken from that program. “Browse and

retention policies for manual backups” on page 274 provides more information."

I also see on Page 252 in the same guide that "The length of time that data is available for recovery by the NetWorker server is determined by the browse and retention policies associated with each client." I deduct from this that retention policies set at client level will supersede the retention policies set at group level.

I will also add in this context for more information:-  Assigning multiple policies to a single client

" Identical versions of a client and save set combination can have a different set of browse

and retention policies assigned for each different backup group to which it belongs. If you

create an identical Client resource with the same name and save set values, but assign it

to a different backup group, you can designate a different set of browse and retention

policies. The NetWorker server employs the Browse Policy and Retention Policy attributes

that correspond to the unique combination of the Client resource’s Name, Save Set, and

Group attributes.

Example 18 Assigning different policies for an identical client

You have a Client resource for the host saturn. The Client resource has a save set value of

All and is assigned to backup group general. The browse policy is weekly and the retention

policy is monthly. You create a copy of the Client resource for saturn, but assign it to the

backup group special. This version of saturn has a browse policy of Weekly and a retention

policy of yearly.

◆ If the group special is backed up, then the weekly and yearly policies are applied.

◆ If the group general is backed up, then the policies weekly and monthly are used."

Based on that I think in your case it will be retention policy at client level that will apply.

Regards

tech88kur

Best practice is to have retention set on one place.  From my experience, retention set on pool will override one set in client, but then again I never used setup where pool would have lower retention than set on client. If you already had such backup, you can run mminfo command to see which retention was applied, for example:

mminfo -avot -q group= ,client= -r "savetime(20),ssbrowse(20),ssretent(20)"

Thank you for this Information, i was not aware of mminfo. Seems a very helpful tool!!!

It was very helpful, Thank you!
I had read the Documentation but had problems understanding that point.

Hi isandro,

is it clear now? Do you need more explanation? we would be happy to help you.

Regards

tech88kur

Hi tech88kur,

it's crystal clear now, thank you

Regards
Isandro

Hi,

So basically if I have:

Media Pool Retention: 5 years

Clients Resources backing on above Media Pool, retention of 35days.

My retention on this clients will be 5 years, longer ret. between client and media pool is the enforced retention?

//GeorgeDicu

Hi @bogdan_f. ,

     The greatest retention will be forced on the saveset. So in your case the resulting retention on the saveset will be 5 years.