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Expiry on a Centera - Governance Edition

gblack
Level 2

We currently have EV 7.5 SP2 (upgraded since KVS, and EV 6.0 SP3) archiving to a Centera (Goverance Edition) and a replica at our DR location.  Up to this point we have wanted to keep everything forever.  Management has made the decision that we only need to keep the past 3 years.  We are exploring storage expiry and have many questions.  Here are our configs:
- Governance Edition Centeras (primary and replica)
- Vault Store Partition retention properties - Never
- Expiry - Never run
- Retention Categories - 5 years

So my question is, are we able to run the Expiry in report mode and trust that the "number of items to expire" will run as it suggests or will the deletes get blocked by the Centera? Also, is there any way to see a history of the Retention Category value? I know that this value (retention period) is retroactive and I believe it is stamped on the C-Clip when it gets ingested into the Centera, but how can I see if/when that value was changed in the Admin Console?  I tried simulating in my test environment but receive 6605, 6761 and 6883 Storage Delete errors.

Lastly, in the Expiry process, does EV remove the item from the database, then the index, then the storage or does it check the storage first and fail if it hasn't reached it's retention period?

Thanks,
Greg

1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION

Accepted Solutions

JesusWept3
Level 6
Partner Accredited Certified
for governance mode it really depends on the retention stamped on the clips themselves and how you set EV to stamp it

most configurations will stamp a time to live on the clip descriptor file, and i think forever is actually something more like 1000 years as opposed to truly forever
but what will happen is if this is the case, you will change the retention on EV and then it will go through, EV will attempt to expire it, and then the centera will block the deletion causing an error to be thrown in the event logs.

Best practice is really to let EV use the retention categories used on the centera and used name retentions on the centera, then like EV you can just edit the centeras retention and then anything with that retention will be deleted as long as it meets the criteria.

One thing to remember though is to expire based off of Archive Date and NOT Modified/Sent date as centera will only use archive date to base its expiry on.

And what EV will do when items expire is it will delete the entry out of the saveset table first, it will then push that item to the journal delete for a brief period (like a few minutes), it will then delete from the replica, then the primary centera, and amidst that an index deletion operation will happen at the same time, once the index, replica and primary copies have been deleted then the item will be deleted from the journal delete table

it is then up to the archive tasks to delete any orphaned shortcuts
https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-allen-turl-07370146

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4 REPLIES 4

JesusWept3
Level 6
Partner Accredited Certified
for governance mode it really depends on the retention stamped on the clips themselves and how you set EV to stamp it

most configurations will stamp a time to live on the clip descriptor file, and i think forever is actually something more like 1000 years as opposed to truly forever
but what will happen is if this is the case, you will change the retention on EV and then it will go through, EV will attempt to expire it, and then the centera will block the deletion causing an error to be thrown in the event logs.

Best practice is really to let EV use the retention categories used on the centera and used name retentions on the centera, then like EV you can just edit the centeras retention and then anything with that retention will be deleted as long as it meets the criteria.

One thing to remember though is to expire based off of Archive Date and NOT Modified/Sent date as centera will only use archive date to base its expiry on.

And what EV will do when items expire is it will delete the entry out of the saveset table first, it will then push that item to the journal delete for a brief period (like a few minutes), it will then delete from the replica, then the primary centera, and amidst that an index deletion operation will happen at the same time, once the index, replica and primary copies have been deleted then the item will be deleted from the journal delete table

it is then up to the archive tasks to delete any orphaned shortcuts
https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-allen-turl-07370146

Liam_Finn1
Level 6
Employee Accredited Certified
I think you are SOL on this one if the retention of Keep Forever on the retention has been set as the centera will not delete the item until the retention marked in the CDF has reached it's limit. As for what JW2 said the Keep Forever is 9999 if i remember correctly.

What you might be able to do is


Set a new retention policy of 3 years. Create a new pool and new .PEA file for the Centera and then start today to archive all new data to the new pool. This way all future archived items are stored under a 3 year policy.

Next in 3 years work with EMC to delete the old pool, they have the privileged delete ability to delete a pool that is not yet expired (as far as I know)

Bruce_Crankshaw
Level 6
Partner
@ Jesuswept2

You mentioned

One thing to remember though is to expire based off of Archive Date and NOT Modified/Sent date as centera will only use archive date to base its expiry on.

Does this apply to a Centera running in Basic mode ? If so can you send me the link or where this is explained  as I haven't come across this fact before and I have a customer using Storage Deletion on Centera using Modified Date ...they are not going to get the result they expect :)

gblack
Level 2
Well luckily my data falls into 2 Retention Categories, neither of which is Retain Forever.  So is there a way to see what items inside of the Centera are capable of being expired? The current Retention Policy is 5 years, but that could have changed anytime over the past 7 years that we have had the system. 
Alternatively, is it possible to export the past 3 years of archived data to a new pool and then just have EMC blow that old pool away?