Keeping backed up data and information about the data

Data Protector lets you specify how long to keep your backed up data on the media itself (data protection), how long to keep information about the backed up data in the IDB (catalog protection), and what level of information to keep in the IDB (logging level).

You can set the protection independently for backed up data and for backup information about this data in the IDB. When copying media, you can specify a different protection period for the copies than the protection of the original media.

Data Protector Internal Database

Restore performance depends, in part, on how fast the media required for a restore can be found. By default, this information is stored in the IDB to enable the highest restore performance as well as the convenience of being able to browse the files and directories to be restored. However, putting all file names of all backups in the IDB and keeping them for a long time can cause the IDB to grow to unmanageable levels.

Data Protector allows you to trade off IDB growth with the convenience of restore, by letting you specify catalog protection independently of data protection. For example you can implement a policy that enables an easy and fast restore within four weeks after the backup, by setting catalog protection to four weeks. From then on restores can still be done in a less convenient way until the data protection expires, say after one year. This would considerably reduce the space requirements in the IDB.

Data protection

What is data protection?

Data Protector allows you to specify the amount of time data on media is protected from being overwritten by Data Protector. You can specify the protection in absolute or relative dates.

You can specify data protection in different parts of Data Protector. For details, see the online Help index: "data protection".

If you do not change the Data Protection backup option when configuring a backup, it is permanently protected. Note that if you do not change this protection, the number of media needed for backup grows constantly.

Concepts guide

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