{"id":47991,"date":"2016-11-25T10:49:00","date_gmt":"2016-11-25T09:49:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.open-e.com\/?p=47991"},"modified":"2025-04-07T10:39:48","modified_gmt":"2025-04-07T10:39:48","slug":"what-are-retention-interval-plans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.open-e.com\/blog\/what-are-retention-interval-plans\/","title":{"rendered":"What are Retention-Interval Plans?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\tOff-site Data Protection is a hot topic not only for Open-E. This strategy is being implemented in various applications more and more often, so as to keep company data safe and sound, and secured from man-made and natural disasters. No wonder IT specialists recommend off-site backup \u2013 keeping data on a remote server where the whole backup process is performed automatically is a reasonable idea. Administrators are not forced to back the data up manually and to control it on every step, wasting plenty of valuable time and effort. Off-site Data Protection in the ZFS-based Open-E JovianDSS<\/a>\u00a0enables creating consistent snapshots of chosen resources and asynchronous replication to remote (or local) destinations. The strategy for off-site backup with retention-interval plans<\/a> is quite unique. In this post we would like to bring you closer to the whole idea of retention-interval plans in the most accessible and comprehensible form. Let’s start from the basics:<\/p>\n

Retention-Interval Plan<\/strong> – each Zvol and Dataset can have one Retention-Interval Plan that is defined by one or several rules<\/p>\n

Rule<\/strong> – controls when snapshots are created and deleted, based on Interval and Retention Period<\/p>\n

Interval<\/strong> \u2013 the time between subsequent snapshots<\/p>\n

Retention period<\/strong> \u2013 the life-time of the snapshots in a rule<\/p>\n

Both intervals and retention periods are expressed in standard units of time (seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years)<\/p>\n

Rotational auto-snapshots<\/strong>\u00a0\u2013 fixed amount of snapshots that rotate through the defined retention period<\/p>\n

Replication<\/strong> – Process of copying a snapshot to another JovianDSS server<\/p>\n

Generally speaking, retention-interval plans are a built-in feature of Open-E JovianDSS, enabling to control the process of automatic activation and deletion of snapshots. Rotational auto-snapshots of a chosen dataset or zvol are stored according to the retention-interval plan for secure and structured \u00a0data archiving.<\/p>\n

Knowing already the basics, let’s focus on some real-life examples.\u00a0 Below you can find a chart that presents what\u00a0a plan might look like. In this plan, a user has set up snapshot every 5 minutes and set to keep them for 1 hour. All in all, max. 12 snapshots have been taken within the last hour. After a new snapshot in the following hour has been created, the latest snapshot (so the very first one) is being deleted.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"interval1\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Now, take a look at another example. The one shown below is an example of a more advanced plan that involves a couple of rules. Here you can notice that the user can:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. set up replication every 5 minutes and keep the copies for 1 hour,<\/li>\n
  2. set up replication every hour and keep the copies for 1 day,<\/li>\n
  3. set up copies each day and keep them for 1 month.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

     <\/p>\n

    \"interval\"<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    By default, the retention-interval plan in Open-E JovianDSS\u00a0 is configured to make a snapshot every 5 minutes and to keep them for 1 hour, plus, another snapshot is made every 1 hour and snapshots are kept for 3 days. Additionally, another snapshot is made once a day and is kept for 1 month. Of course, those are only examples as plans can be set according to user’s individual requirements, which means any number of rules can be set for a retention plan to adapt it to any backup strategy. Once the retention-interval plan is set, the snapshots are replicated automatically to another JovianDSS server for backup. Go to our website to see a brilliant infographic that demonstrates this on 4 time axes – choose the speed of animation to get the true idea of how retention-interval plans in Off-site Data Protection look. More >><\/a><\/p>\n

    Our new solutions article “Off-site backup storage solutions with Open-E JovianDSS<\/a>” lists examples of typical backup scenarios.<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    \"trial_banner\"<\/a><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

     \t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Off-site Data Protection is a hot topic not only for Open-E. This strategy is being implemented in various applications more and more often, so as to keep company data safe …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":48036,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,27,796],"tags":[89,340,439,445,469,556,566,569,573,608],"class_list":["post-47991","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-backup-storage-technology","category-open-e-joviandss","category-zfs-data-storage","tag-backup-storage","tag-interval","tag-odp","tag-off-site-data-protection","tag-open-e-joviandss","tag-replication","tag-retention-period","tag-retention-interval-plan","tag-rotational-auto-snapshots","tag-snapshot"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t