106 - How to configure roll-ups and retention

If you backup regularly, roll-ups offer a way of consolidating multiple backups into one at certain intervals in order to save space. Roll-ups can be configured in the Storage Platform Console under Configure Group > Roll-ups or Configure Collection > Roll-ups.

By default, standard retention on the Redstor Storage Platform entails keeping:

• the daily backup for every day this month
• the daily backup for every day last month
• the last backup of the month (roll-up) for each of the previous two months
• no backups from further than four months back

For example, if you need to restore on 29 September, you will be able to choose from the following backups:

• Any backup made between 1 and 28 September
• Any backup made between 1 and 31 August
• The roll-up of July's backups made on 31 July
• The roll-up of June's backups made on 30 June
• You will not be able to restore backups from May or earlier

Note:

• Roll-ups will only be done for Accounts that have backed up within the last month. In cases where no backups have been performed for over a month, roll-ups will resume after the first successful backup.
• If you have multiple backup sets configured, please note that each backup of a backup set will affect the roll-up schedule.

The roll-up schedule

Perform a roll-up at the end of every calendar month is selected by default, but you can specify a different schedule to suit your needs.

To change the roll-up schedule:

1. Select Always keep x backups...
2. Enter the appropriate numbers in the fields.
3. Ensure that the roll-up retention value is set correctly (see below).
4. Click OK.

Note: If you set the number of backups to always keep to 0, no backups will be retained after a roll-up occurs. Therefore, when the first backup after a roll-up occurs, there will not be an index file to patch against. A warning indicating this will be displayed in the logs and a full index will be requested.

Roll-up retention

To specify the number of roll-ups to retain:

1. Ensure that Keep x rollups online is selected.
2. Enter the appropriate number in the field.
3. Ensure that the roll-up schedule and retention values are correct by reviewing the Roll-up Summary at the bottom.
4. Click OK.

Note:

• If you select Keep all roll-ups online, the Storage Platform will eventually run out of disk space.
• NEVER delete any files, including roll-ups, from the Storage Platform’s StorageVolume folders. The Storage Platform will automatically do maintenance on these folders when needed. Manually deleting files will lead to data loss.

Advanced options

By clicking Show Advanced Options, you can set the following:

• Hierarchical Storage Management

Selecting Hierarchical Storage Management (HSM) will enable HSM for the Group. With HSM enabled, all Accounts belonging to the Group will automatically archive any roll-ups that are older than the latest roll-up kept online into the directory specified on the StorageServer’s HSM tab.

Note: To enable HSM at Group level, HSM must be enabled on the relevant StorageServer. For more information, see Article 1110.

• Backup References

With Backup References enabled, you can view a list of backed-up items that were archived from the Storage Platform to the specified HSM directory on the Restore tab. All archived folders are displayed with greyed-out folder icons and you can browse through the available backup dates.

Note: These files cannot be restored until the data is moved back to the applicable folder on the Storage Platform by a backup administrator.

• MirrorServer Roll-up retention

As with StorageServers, you can specify the number of roll-ups to keep in the MirrorServer.