Retention for Forward Incremental Backups

The retention policy for the forward incremental backup chain is calculated by the following formula:

Retention period = MAX (Catalog Retention, X)

where:

  • Catalog Retention is the retention period specified in Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager.
  • X is the amount of time for which restore points are kept by a backup job.

For example, the retention policy settings are specified in the following manner:

  • The retention policy for a backup job is set to 5 points. The backup job is run daily.
  • The retention period in Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager is set to 1 month, or 30 days.

In this case, Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager will retain indexing data for 30 days, because this value is greater than the number of restore points in the job.