What does VDP do with backups after retention period is up

[wstclair44]

I am running VDP 6.0 in a vSphere 5.5 environment backing up my VMs to a EMC Data Domain. I am doing a full image of the VMs and I have a 60 day retention period for the backups. My Data Domain is starting to fill up I am wondering once a backup file/image is older than 60 days what does VDP do with it? Does it delete it?

[Madmax01]

Hello theire,

So if you're retention Policy is 60 Days. then VDP is keeping it for 60 Days. After that the Maintenance Tasks Garbage Process will clean up and delete the Backup.  Same is if you remove a VM from Backup and delete it from Restore. Space will only getting reduced after the Retention Policy Time.

VMware KB: Understanding reclaim operations in VMware Data Recovery

Best regards

Max

[RyanJMN]

If VDP retention is 60 days I believe it will be approximately between 62 and 69 days before space is reclaimed on the data domain.  VDP creates snapshots on the data domain as part of the maintenance task that expire after a day.  Data Domain deletes the data after the cleaning job which only runs once per week by default.