Changing the Retention Rule for Existing Backups

Scenarios

If a vault is disassociated from a quantity-based or permanent retention policy and then associated with a time-based retention policy, the automated backups created under the original policy will not be automatically deleted. They remain in the vault and occupy the vault capacity. In this case, you can update the retention rule for existing backups to assign a retention period specifically to the automatic backups created under the quantity-based or permanent retention policy, without affecting other backups. After the change, those existing backups will expire and be deleted automatically according to the new retention rule.

Principles

According to CBR's policy, if you dissociate a quantity-based or permanent retention policy and then associate a time-based retention policy, the backups created under the original quantity-based or permanent policy will not be automatically deleted. If backup locking is enabled and you switch from a quantity‑based retention policy to a time-based one, backups created under the original policy cannot be manually deleted due to the locking mechanism. As a result, they will continue to occupy vault capacity. By enabling the function to adjust retention rules for existing backups, you can lower manual maintenance overhead and address the vault capacity problem resulting from locked backups.

Constraints

• Retention rules for existing backups can be changed only if the vault has no associated policy or if it is associated with a time-based retention policy.

Changing the Retention Rule for Existing Backups

1. Log in to the CBR console. Click in the upper left corner and select a region.
2. On any backup page, locate the target vault and choose More > Change Retention Rule for Existing Backups.
3. Select a retention period from the drop-down list. You can select a retention period of one month, three months, six months, one year, or specify a custom duration. The custom retention period must be greater than or equal to the retention period of the associated policy and less than or equal to 99,999 days.
   Figure 1 Changing the retention rule for existing backups
   

4. Confirm the information, enter YES, and click OK.

   You can view the latest expiration time of the backups in the Expires field on the Basic Information tab of the backup details page.