358 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000-2010Finally, we create retention rules for the archive: let us retain only backups that are no older than sixmonths, and let the cleanup be performed after each backup task and also on the last day of everymonth.Retention rules: Delete backups older than 6 monthsApply the rules: After backing up, On scheduleCleanup schedule: Monthly, on the Last day of All months, at 10:00 PMBy default, a backup is not deleted as long as it has dependent backups that must be kept. Forexample, if a full backup has become subject to deletion, but there are incremental or differentialbackups that depend on it, the deletion is postponed until all the dependent backups can be deletedas well.For more information, see Retention rules (p. 39).Resulting tasksAny custom scheme always produces three backup tasks and—in case the retention rules arespecified—a cleanup task. Each task is listed in the list of tasks either as Scheduled (if the schedulehas been set up) or as Manual (if the schedule has not been set up).You can manually run any backup task or cleanup task at any time, regardless of whether it has aschedule.In the first of the previous examples, we set up a schedule only for full backups. However, thescheme will still result in three backup tasks, enabling you to manually start a backup of any type: Full backup, runs every Friday at 10:00 PM Incremental backup, runs manually Differential backup, runs manuallyYou can run any of these backup tasks by selecting it from the list of tasks in the Backup plans andtasks section in the left pane.If you have also specified the retention rules in your backup scheme, the scheme will result in fourtasks: three backup tasks and one cleanup task.7.3.8 Archive validationSet up the validation task to check if the backed up data is recoverable. If the backup could not passthe validation successfully, the validation task fails and the backup plan gets the Error status.To set up validation, specify the following parameters1. When to validate – select when to perform the validation. As the validation is a resource-intensive operation, it makes sense to schedule the validation to the managed machine's off-peak period. On the other hand, if the validation is a major part of your data protection strategyand you prefer to be immediately informed whether the backed up data is not corrupted and canbe successfully recovered, think of starting the validation right after backup creation.2. What to validate – select either to validate the entire archive or the latest backup in the archive.Validation of a file backup imitates recovery of all files from the backup to a dummy destination.Validation of a volume backup calculates a checksum for every data block saved in the backup.Validation of the archive will validate all the archive’s backups and may take a long time and a lotof system resources.
