Create a backup copy group for your incremental-forever incremental backups. This example creates a standard backup copy group for domain domain1, policy set prodbackups, and management class mgmt_ifincr28: define copygroup domain1 prodbackups mgmt_ifincr28 standard type=backup The standard type=backup entries are default values and are not required to be specified. They are included in this example to illustrate that the copy group name is STANDARD and that the type of copy group is backup (instead of archive).

c. Update the backup copy group with the appropriate version, retention, and expiration settings: Remember: In Data Protection for VMware version 6.2 and 6.3, backup version, retention, and expiration is based on a backup-chain granularity level. This method means that even though both incremental-forever full and incremental-forever incremental backups are taken (as part of the 6.2 and 6.3 incremental-forever full backup strategy), version expiration counts only full backups. In Data Protection for VMware version 6.4 (or later), backup version, retention, and expiration is based on a single-backup granularity level. This method means that version expiration counts both incremental-forever full and incremental-forever incremental backups.

The verexists parameter specifies the maximum number of VM backup versions to retain on the server. If an incremental-forever incremental backup operation causes the number to be exceeded, the server expires the oldest backup version that exists in server storage. This example specifies verexists=28. This value means that a maximum of 28 VM backup versions are retained on the server. The retextra parameter specifies the maximum number of days to retain a VM backup version, after that version becomes inactive. This example specifies retextra=nolimit. This value means that the maximum number of inactive VM backup versions are retained indefinitely. However, when verexists is specified, the nolimit value is superseded by the verexists value. As a result, in this example, a maximum of 28 inactive VM backup versions are retained on the server. Based on the settings described in this step, the backup copy group is updated as follows:

update copygroup domain1 prodbackups mgmt_ifincr28 verexists=28 retextra=nolimit

For info, verd and reto are used in case of using the command on server

decommission vm _vm_name_