Setting the Retention Period for All Data

You can specify how long the ISM server tracks the data on your storage volumes before it designates that a volume is eligible for reuse.

The ISM server maintains an entry for each backed-up save set in the ISM catalog for the length of time that you set as the retention period. You can use ON–Bar to recover a save set at any time during the retention period for a save set.

When the retention period for a save set expires, the ISM server no longer maintains the save-set entry in the ISM catalog.

To obtain information about the expiration date and retention period

To display the expiration date for a save set, issue the ism_show -volumes command (see the expires field).
To display the retention period for the ISM server, issue the ism_show -config command (see the retention policy field).

To recover an expired save set, use the ism_catalog -recreate_from command at any point until the storage volume that contains the save set is relabeled. For details on how to recover expired save sets, see Re-Creating the ISM Catalog Before You Use ON-Bar.

To set the retention period for the ISM server

To set the length of time before the data is marked Expired, issue the following command:
```
ism_config -retention #days
```
Specify the retention period in days. The default is six months.

Important:

Because changing the retention period for the ISM server applies the new retention period to all the data that the ISM server tracks, some data might become eligible for automatic recycling either sooner or later than you expected. Be careful about changing the retention period for the ISM server because you could potentially overwrite recent backups.