Backup Job Wizard for Physical Machine: Retention

Important
This page is not displayed if the new scheduler is enabled.

After each job run, NAKIVO Backup & Replication creates a recovery point in the Backup Repository for each physical machine. A recovery point represents the backed up physical machine as of a particular moment in time and allows you to recover individual files, application objects, or the entire machine from the Backup Repository. You can specify how many recovery points should be preserved in the Backup Repository by using the Grandfather-Father-Son (GFS) backup rotation scheme.

When Amazon EC2, Amazon S3, generic S3-compatible storage, Wasabi, Azure Blob Storage, Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage, or Local Folder is selected as the Backup Repository Type for the only backup destination, you can make recovery points in these repositories immutable. With immutability enabled, the recovery points are immutable and stored using the write-once-read-many (WORM) model. In case of Amazon EC2, Amazon S3, generic S3-compatible storage, Wasabi, Azure Blob Storage, or Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage types of Backup Repository, immutable recovery points cannot be overwritten, deleted, or changed by the root user, until the specified period has expired. For Local Folder type of Backup Repository, the root user can still clear immutability.

Retention Settings

Here you can set the retention settings for the backup job. Set the following options:

  • Keep x last recovery points: Retains the specified number of last recovery points for each machine in the job.

  • Keep one recovery point per day for x days: Retains one last recovery point per day for the specified number of days.

  • Keep one recovery point per week for x weeks: Retains the last available backup of every week for the specified number of weeks.

  • Keep one recovery point per month for x months: Retains the last available backup of every month for the specified number of months.

  • Keep one recovery point per year for x years: Retains the last available backup of every year for the specified number of years.

Immutability

In this section, you can configure the Make recovery points immutable for x days option. The recovery points remain immutable for the specified number of days.

Notes

For the Immutability section to be available, the following conditions must be met:

  • Amazon EC2, Amazon S3, generic S3-compatible storage, Wasabi, Azure Blob Storage, Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage, or Local Folder must be selected for Backup Repository Type on the Destination page of the wizard.

  • If Amazon EC2, Amazon S3, generic S3-compatible storage, Wasabi, Azure Blob Storage, or Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage is selected as the Backup Repository type, Object Lock or version-level immutability support and Versioning must be enabled bucket or blob container respectively where your Backup Repository is located.

  • For Local Folder type of Backup Repository, see feature requirements.

For more details and an example of job retention settings, refer to the Keeping Recovery Points article in the Knowledge Base.