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pruvn's avatar
pruvn
Level 5
15 years ago
Solved

Differentiate between many Infinity retention level

Hi Everybody, I need to configure schedule for our Annual backup job, and we want to keep our data infinity. But I can not differentiate between many Infinity retention level, I did try to find in NBU docs but I found nothing. Could you please help me to differentiate these level ?? Thanks Vic
  • available in the master server properties:


    then as far as I'm aware there is no difference - altho' they will be saved to different tapes if you use more than one (NB doesn't mix retentions on tape by default). I presume that they are there and all set to infinity by default, allowing you to change them to whatever period you want. Just pick one for use & stick with it. (We chose the first available (9))

    ***EDIT***
    The following is from the Admin Guide & clarifies the above somewhat:

    "...
    The Retention periods list displays a list of the current definitions for the 25 possible levels of retention (0 through 24). By default, levels 9 through 24 are set to infinite. Retention level 9 is the only level that cannot be changed and remains at infinite.
    Note that if left at the default, there is no difference between a retention level of 12 and a retention level of 20, for example.
    ..."
  • available in the master server properties:


    then as far as I'm aware there is no difference - altho' they will be saved to different tapes if you use more than one (NB doesn't mix retentions on tape by default). I presume that they are there and all set to infinity by default, allowing you to change them to whatever period you want. Just pick one for use & stick with it. (We chose the first available (9))

    ***EDIT***
    The following is from the Admin Guide & clarifies the above somewhat:

    "...
    The Retention periods list displays a list of the current definitions for the 25 possible levels of retention (0 through 24). By default, levels 9 through 24 are set to infinite. Retention level 9 is the only level that cannot be changed and remains at infinite.
    Note that if left at the default, there is no difference between a retention level of 12 and a retention level of 20, for example.
    ..."
  • Hi Andy,

    Thanks for your quick response :D , the Admin Guide use the word "Infinite" while I searched for "Infinity" ^^. I have one thing want to ask you too. Do we have to quick erase the tapes which are recycle from expired media ?? If we do not perform quick erase the expired tapes, then does NBU overwrite the old data ?

    Thank you,

    Vic

  • Any tape with data on that has expired becomes unassigned & therefore is able to be overwritten by NetBackup. This will not happen until all images on a tape have expired.
  • Hi,

    Can anybody tell what is the difference between different retantion levels. I mean what levels represent 5 yrs, 7 yrs etc.

    Regards

    Bhaskar


  • The default retention levels are what you can see in the Master Server Properties window as per my earlier post.

    The levels (exc. level 9 also per my previous post) can be manually altered to whatever retention level you require. You can set whichever one you want to be 5yrs, 7yrs etc.

  • Just one more comment on this which might help...

    NetBackup views the "Retention Level" number (0-24) as different entities.  You are allowed to assign a "Retention Period" to most of these - including the "infinity" ones.  if you choose to assign the same "period" e.g. 4 months to e.g. 5 retention levels, NetBackup will treat each one as a "different" entitiy but will expire them after the same period of time.

    When I say that NetBackup will treats the Retention Levels as different entities, certain rules that NetBackup follows e.g "Allow multiple retentions per media" (which by default does not allow) would force NetBackup to put data with retention level 15 and 16 onto different media even if 15 and 16 were set to the same retention period.  The retention period is just a value of time that you assign to a retention level (which is like an idenity column in a SQL database).

    It is probably best to use the retention levels and periods that have been configured by default where you can and then edit some of the infinity ones where you need something new.

    Hope that helps.