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Number of Successful Full Backups to Retain

  • This article is for Windows only

CSSB will track how many successful full backups have been performed for a given backup set. When a new full backup completes, any excess full backups and their dependents will be removed within 24 hours. The number of full backups to retain is configurable with no upper limit. Special retention values for retaining backups forever and delete after upload are also available.

For example, let's assume that a user has chosen to retain 2 full backups.

  • When the first full backup completes, no backups are purged.
  • When the second full backup completes, no backups are purged.
  • After the third full backup completes, the first full backup and any of its dependent backups will be purged within 24 hours.
    • Enough space must exist on the disk and/or the cloud for the third full backup to complete before the first full backup can be purged.

Incremental and Differential backups are dependent upon a Full backup. When a Full backup is purged, any dependent Incremental or Differential backups will be purged at the same time.

Note: By default, backups are purged once every 24 hours. The retention policy is configurable in the CSSB user interface from the Advanced menu under Preferences.

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How Much Storage Do I Need for My Backups?

Backups will fail if they do not have enough space on disk and/or the cloud. You must ensure that there is enough space for your backups to complete. In all cases, you will need enough space for the total size of each backup cycle times the number of cycles retained. In some cases, you will also need enough space for the next full backup to complete, because the oldest backup cycle will not be deleted until the next full backup is complete.

We cannot predict exactly the amount of space you'll need for any given backup or backup cycle. It depends on the amount of data you have, the type of data you have, and the amount of data that changes between backups.

However, most users find that the size of one backup cycle is similar to the next. They can say things like "my full backups are around 100GB in size." If you have established backups, you can make an educated prediction for the amount of space you will need.

You can read more about storage and retention in the Knowledge Base article for Retention Policy Best Practices.

Retaining Backups Forever

To set retention as forever, change the number of full backups to retain to 0 (zero). This action will have a significant effect on the total storage space used over time, since any backup with a retention of forever will not be removed.

Deleting Local Backups after Upload

Change the retention on the number of full backups to -1 to configure CSSB to purge the local backup after it successfully uploads to the cloud.

The Delete After Upload retention option is available for all backup types except Bare Metal Image.
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