So the question becomes "When is the incremental backup marked
inactive?"  Does it even make sense for an incremental to have a
different retention to a full?

When the next full is done.  No it does not make sense to be different.

For example

My full backups will expire x days after the next full backups is started. All 
of the incrementals that depends on the previous full expires x day after the 
next full have completed.  At the time the next full completes, all of the 
previous incremental backups are mark inactive.




-----Original Message-----
From: ADSM: Dist Stor Manager [mailto:ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU] On Behalf Of 
Steven Harris
Sent: Thursday, June 26, 2014 10:31 PM
To: ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
Subject: Exchange Incremental Expiry

Hi Again

Further to my last, the customer for which I am designing exchange
backups has until now been a Domino shop.  Previously we have taken a
Weekly selective/daily incremental for the databases (remembering that
an incremental on Domino only backs up new databases and those that
aren't logged) plus daily or more frequent log backups.  The database
management class keeps for 18 months.  The logs are kept for 100 days.

I'm now supposed to implement this in Exchange.  I can do a weekly
full/daily incremental with no problem and put them to different
management classes as I do for Domino, however the TDP for Exchange
manual states

Incremental object names are always unique. These names contain
qualifiers whose values make them unique. Incremental object names are
generated at the time of the backup and therefore are not predictable
and cannot be specified.

So the question becomes "When is the incremental backup marked
inactive?"  Does it even make sense for an incremental to have a
different retention to a full?

IIRC the same applies with MSSQL and the client deletes the logs when
the full on which they depend is no longer on the server.  If that is
the case for exchange then there is no point in a different retention
for incrementals.

Please chime in if you know

Thanks

Steve.

Steven Harris
TSM Admin
Canberra Australia.