One year retention period

To enable LTR, you need at least one year of retention for any snapshot. Examples of retention periods that are eligible for LTR are as follows.

However, the following is not a valid retention period:

Based on your retention, whether or not your backup policy is eligible for LTR can be seen on the Create New Backup Policy page. 
The following screenshot shows that the Enable Long Term Retention (LTR) option is disabled for this backup policy as the retention period is less than one year.

However, if your retention period is greater than or equal to one year, you are eligible to enable LTR as shown in the following screenshot:

Daily snapshots threshold

To enable LTR, ensure that the daily snapshots days must be less than the Warm snapshot threshold that you select.
The following screenshot shows that the daily snapshot limit exceeds the warm snapshot threshold.

Backup policy as template

When creating a new backup policy for Windows/Linux Servers and NAS workloads, you can use an existing backup policy as a template. All your existing settings are automatically added to the new backup policy. You can save time and reduce errors in creating a new backup policy.

Note: You cannot use your old backup policies as a template where the daily retention period exceeds the warm snapshot threshold. In the new LTR V2 the daily retention period must be less than the Warm Snapshot threshold.

Enable LTR when creating a new backup policy

1. On the Backup Policies page, click Create New Backup Policy and select a required workload.
   
2. Specify the Name and Description of the backup policy.
3. Click Next and specify the backup schedule.
4. Click Next to specify the retention details.
5. In the Retain section, toggle the Enable Long Term Retention(LTR) option.
   
6. Select the number of days (Warm snapshots threshold) to keep the snapshot in the warm tier. 
   
   Note: Ensure that the warm snapshots threshold that you select is greater than the number of days specified in the Daily Snapshots for field.
   For additional scenarios about increasing and decreasing the warm snapshot threshold, see Impact of changing threshold on existing snapshots and Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) sections.
7. Click Next and then click Finish.

Enable LTR by editing an existing backup policy

Note: Any change in retention will apply to all existing and new snapshots.

1. On the Backup Policies page, click the backup policy name in the Policy Name column.
2. On the Summary page, in the Retention section, click Edit.
   
3. In the Edit Retention dialog, toggle the Enable Long Term Retention (LTR) option.
   
4. Select the number of days to keep the snapshot in the warm tier and click Save. 
   

On the backup policy details page, you can see the status of LTR as shown in the following screenshots:

• LTR disabled:
  
• LTR enabled:

Note: When LTR is enabled, you can also view the number of days selected for retaining the snapshot in the warm tier.

On the Backup Policies page, the LTR column displays the current status of LTR whether it is enabled or disabled for each backup policy.

Note: In the case of Hyper-V and VMware, when LTR is enabled for a backup policy, file-level restore on cold snapshots is not supported.

Increasing the threshold

You can change the number of days to keep snapshots in the warm tier from 15 to 30, 45, or 60 days.
For example, if the current setting is to keep snapshots in the warm tier for 15 days, all snapshots older than 15 days will move from warm to cold tier.
After you increase the threshold from 15 days to 45 days, the snapshots which are already in the cold tier will remain there. However, snapshots that are older than 45 days will now move to the cold tier.

Note: If the threshold is increased for an existing backup, then a warning is displayed that increasing the threshold for existing backup sets will increase the credit consumption.

Decreasing the threshold

You can change the number of days to keep snapshots in the warm tier from 60 days to 15, 30, or 45 days.
Before changing the set threshold, all snapshots not older than 60 days will remain in the warm tier. 
However, after you decrease the threshold from 60 days to 30 days, all snapshots that were created 30 days ago will be moved to the cold tier. In addition, eligible snapshots based on the new threshold, will now be migrated to the cold tier after 30 days.

Note: If the threshold is decreased for an existing backup, then a warning is displayed that decreasing the threshold will have only XX days of warm snapshots.

Dashboard

On the menu bar, click Phoenix to access the Druva Dashboard. On the Dashboard, navigate to the Backup Data section to view the LTR savings for one year and the split of LTR and non-LTR data.

Storage page

On the menu bar, click Storage to access the Storage page. On this page, you can view the split of LTR and non-LTR data, which is the amount of data in the cold and warm tiers, respectively.

Reports page

On the menu bar, click Reports to access the Reports page. On the Manage Reports page, click the report link to view the report with the corresponding details.

Credit Consumption report

On the Druva Phoenix Credit Consumption Report page, check the credit saving summary to view the details of your LTR savings. 

You can also view the credit consumption summary of Phoenix credits consumed over a certain period.

Audit Trails page

You can view the LTR status and the warm tier retention threshold details in the audit trails for creating a backup policy, deleting a backup policy, and updating a backup policy.
On the menu bar, click Manage > Audit Trails to access the Audit Trails page. 

On the Audit Trails page, select a backup policy action (create, update, or delete) in the list and click View Details.
The Action Details dialog box displays the details of current LTR status and warm tier retention threshold days where the LTR is enabled.