Manage Backup Policy

Managing retention period

Retention defines the rules for retaining your backups (recovery point) within the storage. Use the retention period to define the duration for which you want to retain your historical backups.

The objective of retention is to keep important data for future access, depending on how critical it is. Retention also ensures that backups that are no longer required are cleaned from your storage periodically, resulting in less storage utilization and costs.

The retention period would not be honored for the most recent snapshot when a server or VM or backup set is disabled. This allows you to restore the latest snapshot later if required.

Retention should consider the value of your data and the compliance requirements. The different types of data will be retained for different durations. For example, a bank's retention period for customers' financial records is different from facilities inventory records.

The main factors to consider while defining a retention period are:

Compliance requirements
Storage costs
Type of data

Retention period settings

Druva follows the Grandfather-Father-Son (GFS) retention model wherein, in case of an overlap, the retention setting of the longer period (Son-Father-Grandfather relation) is considered. The snapshot is expired as per the settings of the higher period. For example, in case there is an overlap between the daily and weekly retention period, the weekly retention period is considered. So daily is the smallest unit and weekly overrides daily > monthly overrides weekly > yearly overrides monthly.

Also, Druva follows the Gregorian calendar for tracking days.

While backup schedules are configured on an hourly, daily, or weekly basis the last snapshot created by the backups on that particular day will be retained as per the retention setting.

You can define the following durations to retain snapshots.

Retention Period	Description
Daily snapshots	Druva retains all the snapshots that are created for the number of days specified in Daily snapshots. Druva considers midnight as the end of a day. If you have configured Druva to back up your server multiple times within a day, Druva retains all the snapshots for the days specified.
Weekly snapshots (Son)	The number of weekly snapshots that Druva should retain. Druva treats the latest snapshot in the week as the weekly snapshot. Druva considers midnight on Sunday as the end of the week.
Monthly snapshots (Father)	The number of monthly snapshots that Druva should retain. Druva treats the latest snapshot in the month as the monthly snapshot. Druva considers midnight of the last day of a month as the end of the month.
Yearly snapshots (Grandfather)	The number of yearly snapshots that Druva should retain. Druva treats the latest snapshot in the year as the yearly snapshot. Druva considers the midnight of the last day of the year as the end of the year.

The snapshot name displayed on the Hybrid Workloads Management Console is snapshot creation time as per the server time zone, on which the backup occurred. Druva considers the time zone of the server for retaining the snapshots as per the retention setting.

Default retention period settings

If you are registering the server under default organization, Druva provides a default backup policy with the following retention settings:

Daily snapshots: 14 days
Weekly revisions: 4 weeks
Monthly revisions: 3 months
Yearly revisions: 3 years

Example

The following diagram illustrates the snapshots that will be available on a given day ( Feb 9 in this example) based on the retention settings you have configured. In this example the policy is created and backups start on Dec 30 of the previous year.

On 9 Feb you will have 17 recovery points or snapshots to restore as described in the table.

Note: Daily is the smallest unit and weekly overrides daily and monthly overrides weekly and yearly overrides monthly.

Recovery points resulting from	Description
Daily retention setting	You will have 11 ( 14 daily less 2 weekly less 1 monthly) recovery points (starting from 27 Jan) created due to the daily retention settings.
Weekly retention setting	You will have 4 recovery points for 14 Jan, 21 Jan, 28 Jan and 4 Feb created due to the weekly settings. The weekly recovery points that coincide with the daily recovery points (28 Jan and 4 Feb) will be considered and retained as per the weekly setting. So, even though the daily retention period expires for these dates the recovery points will be retained as per the weekly settings (4 weeks).
Monthly retention setting	You will have 1 monthly recovery point of 31 Jan. This recovery point will be available for the next 3 months as it is a monthly retention point. So even though the 14 days daily retention period expires after 9 Feb, the recovery point will be available for the next 3 months.
Yearly retention setting	You will have one recovery point for 31 Dec due to the yearly retention setting. This recovery point will be available for 3 years.

Impact of retention period settings on recovery point objective (RPO)

In continuation with the example above, so let us say malware was detected on 9 Feb evening. After investigation, it was discovered that the data till 7 Feb is corrupted. In that case, the recovery point available to you will be of 6 Feb which is available due to the daily snapshot. However, there could be a data loss of data backed between 7 Feb and 9 Feb.

Considerations

Any changes that you make to the existing retention policies will be applied to all the new as well as the existing snapshots.
Retention periods are applicable for snapshots that reside on CloudCache and Druva Cloud.
Druva runs a retention expiration algorithm to delete the snapshots that have crossed the expiration period. This algorithm does not delete thawed snapshots. For more information, see Snapshots.

Create a Nutanix backup policy

Create new Nutanix AHV backup policies to backup virtual machines on different schedules and retain the backups for different durations. You can also create a copy of existing backup policies and modify them as per requirements.

Procedure

Log in to the Management Console.
Select your Organization if Organizations are enabled
On the menu bar, click Protect > Nutanix AHV.
On the Nutanix AHV page, in the navigation pane on the left, click Backup Policies.
On the Backup Policies page, click New Backup Policy.

In the New Backup Policy dialog box, perform the following tasks:

Field	Task
General tab ►Expand to view image
Name	Enter a name for the backup policy.
Description (optional)	Enter an optional description for the backup policy.
Backup Schedule tab ►Expand to view image
Backup Frequency	Select a frequency for the scheduled backups from Daily, Weekly, or Hourly. Also, select the days of the week when the backups should run if the frequency is Weekly or Hourly.
Start At (Server Timezone)	Select a time when the scheduled backups must start. Ensure that the backups start during off-peak hours. Backup operations follow the time zone of the Backup proxy pool.
Backup Window	Enter the number of hours for which the backup must run. Example If you set Start At to 01:00 AM and you set the duration to 6 hours, backups of your server start at 01:00 AM and stop at 07:00 AM, even if they do not complete.
Max Bandwidth	The maximum bandwidth that each virtual machine can consume while backing up data to Druva. You can enter the bandwidth in Mbps or Gbps. Note: The maximum bandwidth that a backup job can consume is 2 Gbps (2048 Mbps). For a scheduled backup, the job will consume the assigned bandwidth. However, for manually triggered backups, the job will consume the available bandwidth on your network.
Ignore backup window for first backup	By default, the Ignore backup window for the first backup option is enabled. When this option is enabled, it ignores the specified backup duration until the first backup job is complete. The first backup job is complete when the first snapshot is created. You can disable this option to enforce backup duration for the first backup job.

Click Add Schedule to add multiple schedules, and then click Next.
In the Retention tab, perform the following tasks:

►Expand to view image

Field	Task
Daily *snapshots* for	Enter the number of days for which you want to retain all the daily snapshots.
Monthly *snapshots* for	Enter the number of months for which you want to retain the latest monthly snapshots.
*Weekly snapshots* for**	Enter the number of weeks for which you want to retain the latest weekly snapshots.
*Yearly snapshots* for**	Enter the number of years for which you want to retain the latest yearly snapshots.
Enable Long Term Retention	Toggle to enable or disable LTR for the backup policy. You can enable LTR only if the retention period is greater than or equal to one year. To know more about LTR, refer to About Long Term Retention. In the Keep snapshots in warm tier drop-down list, specify the duration in days to retain the snapshots in the warm tier. For example, 15, 30, 45, and 60 days. To know more about the impact of changing the threshold on the existing snapshots, see Impact of changing threshold on existing snapshots.
Enable Data Lock	Toggle to enable the Data Lock for the backup policy. For more information about Data Lock, refer to Data Lock. Note: Once you apply Data Lock to the backup policy, you cannot: Disable Data Lock. Delete the snapshots, backup sets, and backup policy. Edit the retention period in the backup policy. Associate another backup policy to the Data Lock-enabled backup set.

Note: Ensure that you enter a value in at least one of the Daily, Weekly, Monthly, or Yearly snapshot fields. Hybrid Workloads treats the values in the empty fields as zero.

Click Finish. The backup policy is created and listed on the Backup Policies page. You can now assign the backup policy to virtual machines.

Update a backup policy

You can update existing Nutanix backup policies at any time as per your requirements.

Procedure

Log in to the Management Console.
Select your Organization if Organizations are enabled.
On the menu bar, click Protect > Nutanix AHV.
On the Nutanix AHV page, in the navigation pane on the left, click Backup Policies.
On the Backup Policies page, click the backup policy that needs to be edited.
On the backup policy details page, you can update the following:
1. Overview: You can edit the policy name and description.
2. Backup Schedule: You can edit the backup frequency, start time, backup window, and maximum bandwidth. You can also add or delete schedules.
3. Retention: You can change the duration for which you want to retain the daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly snapshots.

Duplicate a Nutanix backup policy

Duplicating existing Nutanix backup policies allows you to create copies of existing policies and edit only the required sections. The duplicated policies are identical to the original backup policy and save you the hassle of creating a policy from scratch.

Procedure

Log in to the Management Console.
Select your Organization if Organizations are enabled.
On the menu bar, click Protect > Nutanix AHV.
On the Nutanix AHV page, in the navigation pane on the left, click Backup Policies.
On the Backup Policies page, select the policy that must be duplicated and click Duplicate Policy.
In the Duplicate Policy dialog box, enter the following details:
1. Selected backup policy: This field is greyed out and is the name of the backup policy that is being duplicated.
2. New backup policy name: Enter the name for the new backup policy.
3. Description (Optional): Enter an optional description for the backup policy.
Click Save. This creates a new backup policy with settings similar to the original backup policy. The new policy is listed on the Backup Policies page.

Click the name of the new backup policy to view details. You can edit the backup policy as per your requirements and save it. You can then assign this backup policy to one or more virtual machines. The virtual machines are then backed up as defined in the policy.

View list of virtual machines associated with a backup policy

Log in to the Management Console.
Select your Organization if Organizations are enabled.
On the menu bar, click Protect > Nutanix AHV.
On the Nutanix AHV page, in the navigation pane on the left, click Backup Policies.
On the Backup Policies page, click the policy for which you want to see the list of associated virtual machines.
On the Backup Policies details page, click the VMs tab.
The VMs tab displays the list of virtual machines that use this backup policy. You can click the VM name to view VM details.

Delete a backup policy

Only a cloud administrator can delete a Nutanix backup policy from the Management Console provided no virtual machines are using the backup policy you want to delete. If a backup policy you want to delete is associated with one or more virtual machines, reconfigure the virtual machines one by one and select a different backup policy for them. For details, see Reconfigure a virtual machine.

Note: You can delete a backup policy only after 7 days of the deletion of the last configured virtual machine mapped to the policy.

Procedure

Log in to the Management Console.
Select your Organization if Organizations are enabled.
On the menu bar, click Protect > Nutanix AHV.
On the Nutanix AHV page, in the navigation pane on the left, click Backup Policies.
Click the Nutanix backup policy that you want to delete.
On the backup policy details page, click Delete.
Click Yes on the confirmation dialog box.