Backup Retention

Backup Retention is the defined period for which backup copies are retained. A retention policy determines which recovery points remain available for how long and when they are automatically deleted or transferred to a long-term archive tier.

The appropriate retention period depends on several factors: business requirements, legal regulations, data change rates, storage budgets and expected recovery scenarios. Short periods reduce storage requirements but can be problematic if an error or attack is only discovered late. Long periods create more historical recovery points but increase costs and governance effort.

In practice, retention periods are often staggered, for example according to the generation principle (grandfather-father-son) with daily, weekly and monthly backup states. Retention must be distinguished from archiving: backups serve recovery, archives serve the long-term, often legally required retention of individual data sets. Sensibly defined retention policies combine both into a consistent concept for Data Management.