# Why Does the Retention Rule Not Take Effect After Being Changed?

There are the following scenarios for a retention rule change:

#### Rule Type Unchanged, Only with a New Backup Quantity Configured

The new policy will take effect for the backups generated based on the old policy. After a backup is generated, regardless of an automatic or a manual backup, the system verifies and uses the latest retention rule.

Example: A user has a vault associated with a disk. At 10:00 a.m. on Monday, the user applies a backup policy to the vault, based on which a backup task will be executed at 02:00 a.m. every day and three most recent backups will be kept. At 10:00 a.m. on Thursday, three backups are kept. Then the user changes the number of backups kept from three to one, and the new policy takes effect immediately. If the user then perform manual backups or wait until the system automatically create a backup at 02:00 a.m. on Friday, the system will verify and use the latest retention rule after the backup task is complete. In this case, only one most recent backup will be kept. Manual backups are not affected by policies, so they will not be deleted.

#### Rule Type Changed from Backup Quantity to Time Period/Permanent

The new policy will take effect only for the new backups generated. Backups generated based on the old policy will not be automatically deleted

Example: A user has a vault associated with a disk. At 10:00 a.m. on Monday, the user applies a backup policy to the vault, based on which a backup task will be executed at 02:00 a.m. every day and three most recent backups will be kept. At 10:00 a.m. on Thursday, three backups are kept. Then the user changes the retention rule type from backup quantity to time period and sets to retain the backups from the last one month. The new policy takes effect immediately. If the user then perform manual backups or wait until the system automatically create a backup at 02:00 a.m. on Friday, the system will verify and use the latest retention rule after the backup task is complete. The three backups generated based on the old policy still exist (the number of backups does not exceed the quantity set in the old retention rule). They will not be automatically deleted and need to be manually deleted if needed. Backups generated based on the new policy will be kept based on the new retention rule.

#### Rule Type Changed from Time Period to Time Period/Permanent

The new policy will take effect only for the new backups generated. Backups generated based on the old policy will be kept based on the old policy.

Example: A user has a vault associated with a disk. At 10:00 a.m. on August 5, the user applies a backup policy to the vault, based on which a backup task will be executed at 02:00 a.m. every day and the backups generated from the last one month will be kept. At 10:00 a.m. on August 8, three backups are kept. Then the user changes the backup retention time from the last one month to the last three months. At 02:00 a.m. on September 6, the backup generated on August 6 based on the old policy will be deleted. The backup generated on August 9 will be deleted two months later based on the new policy.

#### Rule Type Changed from Time Period to Backup Quantity

Both the old and new policies will take effect for the backups generated based on the old policy.

New policy taking effect for old backups

Example: A user has a vault associated with a disk. At 10:00 a.m. on August 5, the user applies a backup policy to the vault, based on which a backup task will be executed at 02:00 a.m. every day and the backups generated from the last one month will be kept. At 10:00 a.m. on August 8, three backups are kept. Then the user changes the retention rule type from time period to backup quantity and sets to retain the most recent seven backups. At 10:00 a.m. on August 15, the backups generated on August 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, and 15 will be kept. The backups generated on August 6, 7, and 8 have been deleted based on the new policy.

Old policy taking effect for old backups

Example: A user has a vault associated with a disk. At 10:00 a.m. on August 5, the user applies a backup policy to the vault, based on which a backup task will be executed at 02:00 a.m. every day and the backups generated from the last three days will be kept. At 10:00 a.m. on August 8, three backups are kept. Then the user changes the retention rule type from time period to backup quantity and sets to retain the most recent seven backups. At 10:00 a.m. on August 10, the backups generated on August 8, 9, and 10 will be kept. The backups generated on August 6 and 7 have been deleted based on the old policy.

Parent topic: Policies