Item  n:  implement retention times specified as number of copies.
 Date:   4/6/2009
 Origin: Kevin Keane - subscription at kkeane dot com
 Status: 
 
 What:   Currently, the retention time for a volume/job etc. is a
         fixed number of seconds from the last time the item (volume,
         job, file) was written or backed up.

         What I would like to see is a retention time based on the last
         successful backup at Full or Differential levels instead.

         For instance:

         Keep Copies = 2

         would mean "expire retention time for a file or job when there
         are at least two newer copies of the same file/job".
 
 Why:    There are three benefits to this approach.

         1) archiving. If you decommission a server, the last backup of
         that server would automatically stay around forever.

         2) storage management. Currently, if a full backup is done in the 
middle
         of a backup cycle, the previous full backup will still be retained, and
         take up space, until its full expiration time.

         3) fail safety. If a full backup fails for some reason for several days
         in a row, the current retention-time mechanism may still allow the
         previous full backup to expire, leaving you potentially with no good 
backup
         at all.
 
 Notes:  This feature may only makes sense for jobs and files, maybe not for 
volumes.
         I haven't fully thought through the implications yet.
         The interaction between "Keep Copies" and "Volume Retention"
         needs to be defined.
         A possible alternate implementation might be to have a relative
         retention time instead of the number of copies: keep a backup until
         two days after the next full backup. I believe that "Keep Copies" is
         better, though, because the relative retention time mechanism would not
         allow for an easy mechanism to specify that you want to keep several
         full backups before expiring the oldest one.

-- 
Kevin Keane
Owner
The NetTech
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