Long-term Retention - Overview

Zerto's Long-term Retention enables storing data for extended periods, defining Retention policies, and restoring the data with granularity down to the VM level.

You can define the target on which to keep the data, and for how long to retain the data, in accordance with your organization’s needs and regulations. Each VPG has its own Retention Policy.

You can select a specific point in time to perform a VPG-level or VM-level data restore.

The Long-term Retention process

When Long-term Retention runs for a VPG for the first time, all the data is read and written to the Repository (Full Retention Set).

Each subsequent incremental Retention process incorporates the changes since the previous run, to provide a complete view of the data at that point in time. The incremental copies rely on the existing full Retention set for that VPG.

Due to the zeros optimization in the Retention process, the Retention Set written to the repository does not include zeros.

Repository

The Repository contains Retention sets.

Retention Policy

Retention sets are kept for the Retention period specified as part of the Retention Policy configuration.

An expired Retention set is deleted as long as no other Retention set is dependent on it. In case there are dependencies, the Retention set is marked for deletion and will be deleted once all dependencies are removed.

In addition, Retention sets are managed for:

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Deleted VPGs, or for VPGs with disabled Long-term Retention.

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A ZVM that was reinstalled on the same VM.

(VMware vSphere only) Application-aware Retention

Zerto's Application-aware Retention captures the state of application data at the scheduled Retention process time. This includes data in memory and pending transactions which ensure continuous use of the application upon restore. For more information, see Application-aware Retention.

Before You Begin

For Long-term Retention considerations and known issues, see the Release Notes > Known Issues > Long-term Retention.