Retention period

[camsupport]

Hi,

A retension period of a full backup image taken in Sepetmeber this year has been changed from one year to 3 months, but I found its expiration data doesn't change based on this new retension period. 

Retension period-  3 months

expiration date/time - 10/19/2017

C

[Michal_Mikulik1]

Hello,

this should work. Please provide exact commands/interfaces you have used for retention period change and then for its verification.

The only thing which came to me is that multiple copies exist and retention has been changed on one copy level only , not on backupid level.

Regards

Michal

[Marianne]

I agree - show us output of bpimagelist for this image-id with -L option and exact command that you have issued. 

[camsupport]

Many thanks for replying my post.  I didn't change it by myself.  I found out the change this morning as we have a request about it.  Normally the retension period is one year for this type full backup.   Please see the output of bpimaglist for this backup id.   

[Mike_Gavrilov]

I'm pretty sure that somebody  changed retention period for the policy, noticed that it was incorrect and changed expiration time backy  to ~ 1 year manually. Look at the expiration time, it's 00:00:00.  As for me administrator forgot (didn't want) to set correct time and set date only :) 

Retention Level:   3 months (5)
Backup Time:            21/09/2016 13:19:14 (1474460354)
Elapsed Time:      1103 second(s)
Expiration Time:        19/10/2017 00:00:00 (1508367600)

 You can check admin log to see if somebody run bpexpdate for the backupid.

[gcbus]

That is where I am confused.   Normally if the retenion level is changed, then expiration time should be changed automatically, too according to this new retension level.   If the expiration time is changed, then the retneions level will be changed accordingly.

  Is my understanding correct?     I will check admin log later. 

[Mike_Gavrilov]

>Is my understanding correct?

No, it doesn't work like this.

NetBackup has  Retention Levels (RT) defined in the configuration (some  of them are pre-defined and other can be customized). You can select RT for each Schedule. After successful backup your image has RT and expiration date that were set up during the backup. If you've modified RT  in the policy after the backup then  NetBackup wouldn't recalculate expiration date and change RT for image it's already done. You can only modify it manually via bpexpdate command.

[gcbus]

So after backup, you only can manully modify the expiration date via  bpexpdate.   Is there a way to manully modify the RT for a backup image after backup?     if not,  the only waty to expirate a backup image earlier is just via bpexpdate, is that correct?

[Mike_Gavrilov]

>Is there a way to manully modify the RT for a backup image after backup?

Try this https://www.veritas.com/support/en_US/article.TECH91301

[Marianne]

What command option did you use with bpexpdate?

-d <date> 
or 
-recalculate -ret <retention_level>

?

[gcbus]

Hi all,

Many thanks for all your help.   Mike, that document is very helpful. 

[Genericus]

I have found that changing the expiration of one image can do wierd things with the displayed expiration of the tape as a whole as well.

I have also found that (especially going back in time) forcing the expiration to a date like tomorrow manually using bpexpdate -d XX/XX/XXXX FIRST, then running the bpexpdate -recalculate will work, sometimes the -recalc has issues changing expirations backwards..