Expiration of full image if cumulative backup relies on it

[weaverslodge]

Guys, 

I have a policy with a 7 year retention, I have a few schedules, daily, weekly full etc. But we do a mid month backup that happens about a week after the full backup so to reduce the storage requirement we decided to use a cumulative incremental backup. Both the full backup and the incremental have a 7 year retention. 

My question relates to the full expiring normally - will it expire 7 years after it backed up and therefore leave the cumulative unrecoverable or will it wait until the backup that relies on it to expire before it does.

If it does the former how have people coped with that ?

[Tousif]

Hello,

The retention and expiration are not dependent. Once it meets the due date it will get expire. 

You have to calculate the full backup and incremental backup retention to meet your restore request.

Best Practice:

Yearly: 7 years [Full]

Monthly: 30 Days [Full]

Weekly: 7 Days [Full]

Daily: 7 Days [Diff Incremental]

Note: Cumulative backup takes more space than the differential backup. 

Regards,

[Tape_Archived]

Each individual backup image has it's own retention. Once Full expires you can restore possible data from Cumulative (most probably you will not get all data you would like to restore). For you Full backup expires week ahead of cumulative.

It's just a math and if you retain Full backup for 7 year and 1 Week you should be good. As suggested by @Tousif you don't have to retain cumulative for 7 years as probably of restoring from 7 year cumulative is very less if you have Full backup available.