Version Retention & Archive Maintenance

Version retention is the ability to specify the rules for removing from your backup archive the versions of files that you no longer care about. Removing these no longer relevant versions can play a big role in managing the size of your backup archive. In CrashPlan PRO, version retention means keeping more of your more recent versions and less of the older ones.

CrashPlan PRO uses a “distributed risk” model, so that your risk is distributed over time, rather concentrating risk over a flurry of activity or requiring you to keep an unnecessarily large backup that retains all versions indefinitely.

Archive maintenance involves cleaning up the backup archive to remove backed up data according to the retention settings you've specified. Archive maintenance removes:

• File versions that are too old
• Deleted files that no longer need to be kept
• Files that are no longer selected for backup
• Self-heal archive blocks that have become corrupted (re-requests those blocks from the client).

Archive maintenance takes place according to a schedule that you specify in the admin console. The administrator can also manually maintain the archive by choosing Computer > Maintain Archive (a low-priority operation that can be interrupted by a backup) or by choosing Computer > Maintain w/o Interrupt (cannot be interrupted by a backup.)

A user can perform a manual archive maintenance by clicking the Compact button in PRO Client for a specific destination.

CrashPlan PRO version retention options provide the following benefits:

• Keep versions based on the age of the file.
• Determine how long backed up files are available for restoring.
• Balance length of retention against the size of your backup archive.
• Minimize the amount of space archives consume at the backup destination by removing the data that no longer needs to be in the backup archive.
• Set the rules for keeping versions over a specific periods of time in accordance to your retention policies, or keep all versions indefinitely.

PRO Client - Version Retention and Backup Frequency

PRO Client - Setting Backup Frequency and Specifying Version Retention