Retention Policies

Cloud-native snapshots and image-level backups are not kept forever — they are removed according to retention policy settings specified in the backup schedule settings while creating a backup policy.

Depending on the data protection scenario, retention policies can be specified:

In restore points — for cloud-native snapshots.

The snapshot chain can contain only the allowed number of restore points. If the number of allowed restore points is exceeded, Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure removes the earliest restore point from the snapshot chain. For more information, see VM Snapshot Retention and File Share Snapshot Retention.

In days/months/years — for image-level backups and archives.

Restore points in the backup chain (either regular or archive) can be stored in the backup repository only for the allowed period of time. If a restore point is older than the specified time limit, Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure removes it from the backup chain. For more information, see sections VM Backup Retention, SQL Backup Retention and Cosmos DB Backup Retention.

You can also specify retention settings for snapshots that become obsolete. For more information, see Configuring Global Retention Settings.