Understanding vRanger retention policy. (4043861)

The backup jobs and the savepoints created by vRanger Backup & Replication have the following characteristics: 

• Each backup job created by vRanger tracks its own savepoint list. The backup job cannot delete savepoints created by a different one.
• When a backup job is deleted, the savepoints are considered orphans. In order to recover space, these savepoints must be deleted manually.
• The savepoint count is the minimum number of savepoints that vRanger should keep in the repository at all times. This value allows you to guarantee a specific number of savepoints. If the Recurrence Schedule has been set to run on intervals, consider how many times the backup job will run in a day when planning how many savepoints must be stored at all times. 

The retention policy differs between the incremental and the differential backups due to the following:

• Incremental backups will track the changed blocks since the last job performed. Due to this, the full backup and the child incremental backups are required to perform the restore of the virtual machine. Since all the incremental backups are linked to the full backup, these cannot be expired or removed until the full backup is deleted based on the retention policy.
• The differential backup will only track the changed blocks since the last full backup performed. To restore a virtual machine, the full backup and one differential backup is required. Since the restores only require a full and a differential backup, retention policy can be applied directly to the child differential backups. 

An incremental backup job with 7 minimum savepoints and 6 ones before performing a new full backup can have a maximum of 13 savepoints in the repository before the retention policy is applied:

A differential backup job with 7 minimum savepoints and 6 ones before performing a new full backup can have a maximum of 8 savepoints in the repository before the retention policy is applied: