Retention rules are applied after backup.

1. Select the data you want to back up, specify a location, select Backup scheme: Simple and set a schedule.
2. To set the archive cleanup, navigate to the Retention rules section:

   

3. In Retention Rules window select Delete backups older than and set the desired time period for storing backups:

   

   Press OK to close Retention Rules window.

4. Retention rules in Simple backup scheme are automatically applied after backup. If you want to apply retention rules before backup or on schedule, create a Custom task instead;
5. After you create the task, you can check it in the settings of your plan. Also the plan consists of two tasks - backup itself and Replication/Cleanup task for applying retention rules:

   

Retention rules are applied after backup.

Select a retention period for each type of backup (daily, weekly, monthly):

Retention rules are applied after backup.

Backups are retained based on their levels.

1. Select the data you want to back up, specify a location, select Backup scheme: Custom and set schedule.
2. Navigate to the Clean up archive section.
3. Retention depends on the configuration that you selected:

Using retention rules

Select between age of backups, archive size or number of backups in the archive:

Generally it is recommended to keep at least 2 backup chains (full backup + incrementals/differentials).

(!) Note: last backup in archive will not be deleted even if it meets the retention rules conditions.

Advanced settings (If a backup to be deleted has dependencies):

• If you use only full backups it does not matter what you choose, since full backups do not depend on each other.
• Retain the backup until all dependent backups become subject to deletion: the backup will be kept until all backups that depend on it also violate retention rules. Then all the chain will be deleted at once. This mode requires extra storage space for storing backups whose deletion is postponed;
• Consolidate the backup: The program will consolidate the backup that is subject to deletion with the next dependent backup. This mode requires more time and system resources to perform the consolidation.

  (!) If Consolidation operation is interrupted (e.g. due to power failure or connection loss) backups may become corrupted.

4. Select when to apply retention rules (the default setting is Never). You can select one or several of the following options:

• Before backup;
  
• After backup;
• On schedule: this option is useful if you want to postpone the cleanup task to the time when the server is not in use.

When there is insufficient space while backing up

If there is not enough space to store a backup being created, the oldest backup will be deleted. This setting allows to delete the last backup in the archive. Note that if the task fails after having deleted the last existing backup, neither the previous data nor the data was being backed up will be available for recovery.

 

After you create the task, you can check it in the settings of your plan: the plan consists of four tasks - three backup tasks for backups of different type and a cleanup tasks for applying retention rules: