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Question

Worm data deletion

  • 6 November 2023
  • 3 replies
  • 249 views
L
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Hi Team, 

We have a question W.R.T data deletion in below scenario:

Test case: We have a worm storage policy with data retention of 1 day 1 cycle. 

We have taken 2 full backup’s(1 cycle retention is completed), when the retention is completed shall my 1st backup be deleted? 

Will the second full backup taken be on storage forever or it will be pruned at some point.

Test case 2: 

Scenario : We have a worm storage policy with data retention of 1 day 1 cycle. 

If we perform only 1 full backup and no further backups being taken, will data get pruned when retention is over or since the cycle of retention(2 full backups) criteria is not met will the data stay forever.

 

3 replies

Damian Andre
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Firstly, I want to call out worm here since it has no bearing on your scenarios.

WORM is only there to stop users from expiring jobs before their set retention, so it does not impact actual retention rules at all - it just wont let you break the rules once set.

 

1 full = 1 cycle, so 1 full backup must always be kept. In scenario #1, the second full job you ran will be retained forever - the initial full will meet days and cycles retention and age off. if you never run another full and all settings are default, then that second full will be retained forever.

in scenario #2 - the full backup will stay forever. The days requirement will be met, but cycles will never be met to erase the full (otherwise cycles will drop to 0 which is not allowed)

 

This may help - a spreadsheet that helps calculate retention (although it assumes you have incrementals too) - but a handy tool none the less.

https://documentation.commvault.com/2023e/expert/11921_spreadsheet_for_calculating_retention.html

L
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Thank you for your response. When cycles are involved is there any way that we could clear the complete data on the object storage side. Is there any combination we could try like X full backups y incremental backups? or since cycle is in place last full backup will be retained forever.

Damian Andre
Rank
Userlevel 7
Badge +23

Thank you for your response. When cycles are involved is there any way that we could clear the complete data on the object storage side. Is there any combination we could try like X full backups y incremental backups? or since cycle is in place last full backup will be retained forever.

Cycle is there to protect you from not losing all your backups, say, if your tape drive breaks or your storage bucket is inaccessible for some time. But, there is an option to remove cycles and only use days retention - keeping in mind that once the days are hit, the jobs are erased regardless:

 

https://documentation.commvault.com/2023e/expert/161377_days_based_retention.html

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