EVault for Data Protection Manager. Course 411 Understanding EVault Retentions

Transcription

1 EVault for Data Protection Manager Course 411 Understanding EVault Retentions

2 Table of Contents Objectives... 3 Scenario... 3 Introduction... 4 Daily Retentions The Basics... 4 Expiring Safesets... 6 Retention Customization Daily Backups... 7 Retention Customization Monthly Backups Diagram of what you could restore from Conclusion EVault for Data Protection Manager i365, A Seagate Company

3 Objectives From this document, you ll learn what retentions are and how to customize them to fit your business and compliance requirements. Scenario In some of the previous EVault related courses, we referenced this document. It s within the EVault Console on the EDPM appliance that you would change retentions. Retentions can vary from Agent to Agent. For instance, you might need to be able to restore you accounting server back 7 years vs. you might only need to be able to restore you file server back 1 year. 3 EVault for Data Protection Manager i365, A Seagate Company

4 Introduction In this section, you ll learn about retentions. Retentions dictate how far back in time you can restore your data. EVault comes preconfigured with the most common settings using an industry standard methodology of using Monthlies, Weeklies, or Dailies. Otherwise known as Grandfather, Father, Son. Below you ll see what the default settings would allow you to restore: All retention settings are customizable to fit your business and compliance needs, but again, the above settings are pretty typical in the industry. Daily Retentions The Basics Focusing on the daily retention. The default setting is 7 Copies / 7 Days. This setting is an AND clause. Both of these retention rules need to be exceeded before a safeset will expire. In other words, on the 8 copy online and 8 days have past, the first safeset will expire. This allows for us keep a rolling set of 7 daily backups online at any given time. 4 EVault for Data Protection Manager i365, A Seagate Company

5 To explain what can be recovered, I m backing up the following items. Safeset 1 ABC.txt 123.txt Safeset 2 and above ABC.txt So when I backup safeset 1, I ve selected 2 files for backup. On safeset 2 and above, someone has removed 123.txt from the server, and therefore, it s not being backed up going forward. Here, I ve backed up only two times. My seed was conducted on Monday, and a Delta backup was performed on Tuesday. You have to visualize your backups as snapshots in time. In the diagram below, I can restore both ABC.txt and 123.txt from safeset 1. If I were to choose safeset 2 to restore, I would only be able to recover ABC.txt EVault for Data Protection Manager i365, A Seagate Company

6 In the diagram below, I ve only backed up 7 times with my Daily backup. Therefore, I have not exceeded the AND clause of 7 copies / 7 days. I can still restore both ABC.txt and 123.txt from safeset 1, and if I were to choose to restore any of safesets 2-7, I d only be able to restore ABC.txt Below, I ve just backed up my 8 th daily backup. Therefore, both the number of copies and the number of days have been exceeded. This is my 8 th copy and 8 days have past. This triggers safeset 1 to be removed from the Vault This alarms a lot of people though. What happens when safeset 1 is expired? Do I have to reseed? The answer is no. The only thing that s removed from safeset 1 is data that is not relevant to any current safesets. Expiring Safesets You won t need to know this, but below is how the EDPM appliance handles the data. When backing up to the appliance, EVault stores safesets indexes and safeset data. I like to compare this to a book library. Safeset indexes are comparable to a card catalog. Safeset data is comparable to books in the library. The safeset indexes have pointers to safeset data for that particular safeset. For the safeset data, we don t store data in its native format. It s in a compressed/encrypted format only readable by EVault, but for sake of explanation, I ll write it out in its native format. Example Safeset Indexes Safeset 1 Safeset 2 Safeset 3 etc Safeset Data ABC.txt 123.txt For safeset 1, it has pointers to both ABC.txt and 123.txt. This index is called whenever you do a restore. If we tried to restore safeset 1, the safeset index for safeset 1 is called, and based on its pointers, it knows which safeset data is associated with it. For safeset 2 and above, we can see that there are only pointers to ABC.txt for this example. 6 EVault for Data Protection Manager i365, A Seagate Company

7 When safeset 1 is expired per retention, the associated safeset index is also removed. As seen below, nothing references 123.txt anymore and therefore not needed to restore any current safesets. EVault then removes any orphaned data 123.txt. As you can see, the entire seed is not removed. We only remove data that s been orphaned. Safeset Indexes Safeset 1 Safeset 2 Safeset 3 etc Safeset Data ABC.txt 123.txt Retention Customization Daily Backups In this next section, we ll be discussing retentions and how to modify the existing retention rules to fit your needs. Let s go back to the previous example of a daily retention. Remember that the default settings for a daily retention are to keep a minimum of 7 copies online for a minimum of 7 days. Remember that this is an AND clause where both of the values need to be exceeded before a safeset can be expired. In other words, as our 8 th backup comes online and 8 days have past, our first safeset will expire. Remember also, that when the first safeset expires, we are not losing our entire seed. The only data that s removed from the Vault is information that was unique to that safeset. Using this has a basic model and foundation for retentions, in the previous example, we were backing up Sun through Sat with our backups starting on Monday. As we get our backup for Sunday, we can restore from any of those 7 previous backups. On the following Monday, this will be our 8 th safeset online and 8 days have past. Therefore our retentions have been met, and the first daily safeset will be removed from the Vault Now, let s talk about the Daily backup if we had scheduled it Mon-Fri instead of Sun-Sat. This will result in a couple of extra safesets that the user might not expect. With our backups starting on Mon, Mon-Fri are the same as in the previous example, but in this case, we re not backing up with our Daily backup on Sat or Sun. So on Friday, we will have 5 copies online and 5 days have past EVault for Data Protection Manager i365, A Seagate Company

8 On Saturday, we re not backing up our Daily, but we will still have only 5 copies online and now 6 days have past. On Sunday, we will still have 5 copies online and 7 days have past. On the following Monday, we run a backup resulting in 6 copies online and 8 days have past, but this will not trigger our first safeset to drop off as some might expect. The reason is that the AND clause has not been met. We have not exceeded 7 copies and 7 days. Tuesday s backup, we will have 7 copies online and 9 days have past. It s not until we backup on Wednesday that the retention rules have been met with 8 copies online and 10 days passing, and the first daily backup will be expired. In this example, you can see that we exceeded the number of days significantly, but it s not until both conditions are met for the number of days and the number of copies that the Vault can expire a safeset. The user, in this case, will end up with a few extra safesets, but most users don t mind being able to restore back a couple more days (5 copies/6 days) (5 copies/7 days) 6 copies / 8 days 7 copies / 9 days 8 copies / 10 days If we actually wanted our retentions to expire on the following Monday in this Monday through Friday backup scenario, we could set the number of copies to 5 copies and the leave the number of days at 7. That way on the following Monday, the user will have backed up 6 times and 8 days have past (5 copies/6 days) (5 copies/7 days) 6 copies / 8 days Let s talk more about customization of retentions so that you can get a better idea of how to model EVault to your current compliance rules. I just walked you through 2 examples. Both allowing for 1 week s worth of backups. The first example was running backups Sun-Sat with the Daily backup, and we had set the values to 7 copies for 7 days. In the other example, we were running Monday through Friday backups with our Daily backup, and we set the values to 5 copies for 7 days. You ll notice that increasing your Daily backups to cover several weeks, it just a matter of multiplication. Weeks Days Backed Up Number of Copies Number of Days 1 Sun-Sat Mon-Fri 5 7 So let s move onto a new example, my client tells me that standard Daily retentions are not going to be sufficient for them. They want to run Sunday through Saturday backups, but they want to be able to restore any day within the last 2 weeks rather than the standard week. We saw that 1 week with Sun 8 EVault for Data Protection Manager i365, A Seagate Company

9 through Sat backups required us to have 7 copies for 7 days. Therefore with 2 weeks, we multiply the values by 2. Therefore this client would need to set their retentions to 14 copies for 14 days. So on the 15 th copy and the 15 th day, the first daily safeset will be retired from the Vault. Weeks Days Backed Up Number of Copies Number of Days 1 Sun-Sat Mon-Fri Sun-Sat Moving onto another example, my client tells me that they would like to run Mon-Fri backups with their Daily, but they want to be able to restore any Mon Fri within the last 3 weeks. We saw already that 1 week of Mon Fri backups had retentions of 5 copies for 7 days. What would this be for 3 weeks? Weeks Days Backed Up Number of Copies Number of Days 1 Sun-Sat Mon-Fri Sun-Sat Mon-Fri We would need to set the retentions to 15 copies for 21 days. I multiplied the values of the 1 week example times 3. How about this example? My client wants to be able to restore any day within the last Month, and they are running Sun-Sat backups. This would be assuming the largest number of days in a month. What would you guess to set the number of copies and the number of days? You won t be multiplying like we did in the previous examples. You just have to assume the largest month out there. Weeks Days Backed Up Number of Copies Number of Days 1 Sun-Sat Mon-Fri Sun-Sat Mon-Fri Month Sun-Sat We should set the values to 31 copies for 31 days. On some of the shorter months, you will end up with a couple extra days that you can restore from, but again, most clients don t this. Also, in this example, since we re backing up Sun-Sat and can restore any day within the last month, the need to incorporate Weekly backups might not be necessary as they are already capture with the Daily backup. Keep in mind that as you increase the amount retentions to be maintained, the amount of storage required will also increase. 9 EVault for Data Protection Manager i365, A Seagate Company

10 Retention Customization Monthly Backups Now let s move onto customizing our monthly backups. The default Monthly values allow you to keep 1 years worth of monthly backups, and the retention is set to keep a minimum of 12 copies online for a minimum of 365 days. In this example, my client wants to increase their retentions to allow for 3 years of Monthly backups. Using the same logic of multiplication that we used on the Daily backups, how would you calculate the values for this example? Please just think about the logic involved. Years Number of Copies Number of Days We multiply the values by 3 to get 36 copies and 3*365 which equals So using these models, you can see that retentions can be modeled to fit any of your compliance needs. Whenever discussing retentions with a client, I always ask them if the default retentions will work for them based on their needs, and I give them an example of what the default daily s, weeklies, and monthlies would allow them to restore. Another question that I ll ask is How are you backing up your data currently? EVault can be modeled to keep the same type of retention history that your previous backup solution could provide. Another question that I ll ask is, In your industry, are there any types of compliance rules that you need to adhere to? Industries like financial institutions and law firms have regulations that require them to keep their monthly backups for more than the 1 year. Diagram of what you could restore from Below is a diagram of what you would be able to restore from assuming today s the 31 st. This is assuming that you ve scheduled the following without changing any retention settings. Daily M-F 8PM Weekly Sat 8PM Monthly - Last 8PM (Today) In blue, we see our Daily backups. These are the last 7 consecutive M-F s. 10 EVault for Data Protection Manager i365, A Seagate Company

11 In green, we see our Weekly backups. There will actually be one additional Weekly in the previous month. This totals 5 Weekly backups. Then, we have our Monthly back on the last day of the month. This is indicated in orange. This is all assuming today is the 31 st. All of the colored items are days we can restore from. You can think of your backups as snapshots in time. What existed on that given day and was included in the backup selection, you should be able to restore. Below, if a while was created on the 10 th and deleted on the 11 th and today s the 31 st, you would not be able to restore that file because it does not exist in any of the backup sets (Today) In this other example, if a file was created on the 10 th and deleted on the 18 th and today s the 31 st, you would be able to restore from the backup taken on the 13 th because the file existed on the server on the 13 th. The file would look like however it did on the 13 th (Today) Hopefully, you can see why some people have opted to change their retention settings. Keep in mind though. The more safesets you are storing, the more storage will be required. EVault does not recommend creating Daily retentions to be configured more than 90 copies for 90 days. Conclusion Hopefully you have a better understanding of how retentions work. Please feel free to do further testing in your training lab. For further information regarding EVault, you can always access the EVault Knowledge Base and various user guides at For further information about DPM, you can always access their Technet site at If this link is broken, goto navigate to Library, System Center, and choose System Center Data Protection Manager EVault for Data Protection Manager i365, A Seagate Company

12 You can always send comments and suggestions for this training module to or for support related issues you can contact us at 12 EVault for Data Protection Manager i365, A Seagate Company