About expired backup images after changing the retention period

[Eric_Yuen]

Hello administrator, can I ask a question about retention period, to help you understanding what I mean, I present an example here :)

In May 1st, I created the policy for backup the Oracle database, in Shedule, I setted the retention period to 1 month, backup frequency is 1 week.

After 2 weeks, 18th May, 2 backup images have been created in NBU system, the retention period is 1 month. It's perfect !

But I found that it's enough to keep 2 backup images only , so I changed the retention period to 2 weeks in policy.

When 3rd backup image was created, what I expected was that the first one, the oldest backup image created before 2 weeks, should be expired and removed from NBU storage, but it did not happen : (

...So can you help clarify if I modify the retention period in Policy, whether backup images which were created before modifing the policy will be removed  or not? How does this expired/image clearup mechanism works..

Thanks in advance and best regards,

[Nicolai · Accepted solution]

No No - Netbackup does not work like that. When a backup is created the retention is applied and it will stay the same until it expire or you bpexpdate -recalgulate on the image. So a changes in a policy will only impact new backkups.

DOCUMENTATION: When using bpexpdate -recalculate to change retention levels, what impact does it have on image and media databases?

http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH35240

Hope this clarify ?

[Eric_Yuen]

Hi Nicolai,

Thanks for your quick responese, I think that following statement is exactly what I want:

 "So a changes in a policy will only impact new backkups"

Thanks very much.