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Protect File Server and NAS data in Archive storage tier
Updated over a week ago

Enterprise Workloads Editions: ❌ Business | ✅ Enterprise | ✅ Elite


❗ Important

The availability of the Archive feature is limited to Enterprise and Elite editions. To access this feature, contact your Account Manager or Support. This article/documentation is subject to change based on the continuous improvements to this feature.



❗ Important

Archive is not suitable for frequently modified data. As the archive data is retained for one year or more, it may result in higher credit consumption for such data.
Archive is best suited for the data that rarely changes and requires higher retention.


About Archive storage tier

Druva Archive is an ultra-low-cost storage tier provided to reduce the cost for storing large files that are rarely accessed or restored but required to be protected for future reference and compliance purposes. Some examples of these large files could be large engineering files, images, media, medical imaging, engineering designs, CCTV footage, and DB dumps.
Archive allows you to bypass the warm storage tier and directly backup the files to the cold storage.


📝 Note
Unlike Druva Warm tier, the Archive storage tier is not recommended for application recovery and business continuity.


When you backup data to Archive, the data is directly sent to the cold tier.


📝 Note
Archive is not available for AWS Marketplace customers.


Choosing the Archive option

The following points can help you in deciding the Archive option for your data backup requirements.

  • This data is not RPO intensive and the backup frequency is not very often but once a day (24 Hours) or once in a few days. The data is protected for the purpose of compliance and future reference, restores are rare and the usual restore size is small

  • The retention period of backed up data is one or more years

  • The waiting period of 5+ hours is acceptable to retrieve and restore the backed-up data when the restore event is triggered.

  • Additional cost for large restore requirements is acceptable

Choose the best storage tier

The following table provides information to help you choose the appropriate storage tier:

Warm Tier vs. LTR vs. Archive

Warm Tier

Cold or LTR Tier

Archive

All Workloads

All Workloads

File and Folder on Server (FS) and NAS

RPO: Any Frequency

RPO: Any Frequency

RPO:24+ Hours

RTO: Available for Immediate Restore

RTO:12+ Hours

RTO: 5+ Hours

Standard

Up to 20% cost reduction

Up to 50% cost reduction

Restore Cost: Not Applicable

Restore Cost: Not Applicable

Restore Cost: One-time free restore for 1% of protected data (source+change) in a day. Unused restore capacity will be rolled over to the next day.
Data restored for more than 1% of the protected data, will be charged at 1 Credit/TB.

For more information, see Restore fee.

Data will stay in the warm tier

Data moved to Cold Tier after 15, 30, 45, and 60 Days

Data moves to the Cold tier on day 1

Calculation of credit consumption

The formula to calculate the total number of credits consumed for a backup set is as follows:
Credit Consumption (in Credits) = (Deduped backup set data size) * (Credit consumption rate per TB per month)* (number of months the data is retained for)

With Archive, you can achieve up to a 50% reduction in storage costs vs. the warm tier.
The following examples explain the credit consumption for one year with the Archive storage tier.

Data profile

WarmTier ( 1 yr TCO)

LTR ( 1 yr TCO)

Archive ( 1 yr TCO)

Data protected

10 TB

25 % Dedupe

7.5 TB

90 credits

72 credits

45 credits

Estimated yearly restore data

0.1 TB

NA

NA

NA

Per TB Rate

1 Credit

Average file size

2 MB

Total

90 credits

72 credits

45 credits

TCO reduction in %

20%

50%

Early delete fee

If you delete your data before the one-year retention period completes, Druva incurs an early delete cost. Hence, we charge you an early delete fee depending on the size of your data that you deleted early from the cold tier. The early delete fee is recorded in your billing.

Conditions for early delete fee

An early delete fee will apply if your snapshots get expired due to a reduction of the retention period.
An early delete fee will apply if you manually delete the cold snapshots, backup sets, or servers with cold snapshots.


📝 Note
Snapshots older than one year (after Archive is enabled) will not incur any early delete fee.


Calculation of early delete fee

We calculate the early delete fee for the early deletion of snapshots, backup sets, and servers. This delete fee is added to your billing. Early deletion refers to the data that gets deleted before one year of the retention period. The early delete fee is calculated based on the size of the data that gets deleted from the cold tier before completing one year.
Early Delete Fee (in credits) = 0.35*(12 - # months in cold tier)*(Data deleted in TB)

Restore fee

Archive provides a free restore tier and a paid restore tier. You can restore 1% of the archived data (source + changes) for free. Anything beyond free restore requires a restore fee, which is 1 credit per TB.
The following is an example of restore calculation:

For Day 1 and Day 2, no charges and restore capacity is accumulated.
For Day 3, restore is done and data restored more than the available free restore capacity (data restored - restore capacity) is charged at 1 credit per TB.
For Day 4 restore capacity resets to zero and starts to accumulate as the new data is backed up.

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

Day 4

Day 5

A: Source

100 TB

B: Change (new data)

10 TB

10 TB

10 TB

10 TB

C: Source + Change (A + B)

100 TB

110 TB

120 TB

130 TB

140 TB

D: Free Restore Capacity (1% * C)

1 TB

1.1 TB

1.2 TB

0.1 TB

0.2 TB

E: Complete Restore

0 TB

0 TB

2 TB

0 TB

0 TB

F: Restore Charge (E - D * 1 Credit per TB)

0 Credit

0 Credit

0.8 Credit

0 Credit

0 Credit

Next step

Now that you have understood the feature, go ahead and do some savings by enabling Archive.

Enable Archive


❗ Important

The availability of this feature is limited based on the license type, region, and other criteria. To access this feature, contact your Account Manager or Support. This article/documentation is subject to change based on the continuous improvements to this feature.



📝 Note
The availability of the Archive feature is limited to Enterprise and Elite editions.


When creating a backup policy, you can configure the Archive option for your data backup.


📝 Note
For Archive data backup, the minimum retention period must be greater than or equal to one year.


Therefore, in the Retention panel, you must set the period to at least one year.
Important: Once you enable the Archive for your data backup, you cannot disable it because moving the data set from cold storage to warm storage or the LTR tier is not supported.

Procedure

  1. Start creating a new backup policy.

  2. Go to the Retention tab.

  3. In the Storage Tier click Archive. In the Retention field, specify the number of years you want to retain the data on the cloud and then click Next.

    Archive.png
  4. Continue with the backup policy settings and click Finish.

    archive_scripts.png

📝 Note
You can also edit the Archive backup policy. For more information, see Edit a backup policy. In the Summary tab, go to the Retention card and click Edit. In the Edit Retention window that displays, change the number of years you want to retain the data. Once you change it and save it, the policy is updated.
Any action, such as the status and retention period for an Archive policy is captured on the Audit Trails page. For more information, see View Admin Audit Trails page.


Configuring backup set

For more information on NAS, see

For more information on FS, see

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the difference between LTR and Archive?

LTR is a low-cost storage tier that reduces the cost of aging backup copies retained for long-term compliance and regulatory purposes. Data is written to warm storage and based on selected threshold, it automatically tiers to Cold tier as it ages.Archive is an ultra-low-cost storage tier for large files protected for future reference and compliance purposes. This data is rarely accessed or restored. The data is backed up directly to cold storage, bypassing a warm storage tier.In both instances, these tiers only apply to data kept for more than a year.

Can I place an unlimited amount of data in the Archive tier?

Yes.

How can I get more information?

Contact your Sales representative.

Which data is best suited for archiving?

Archive is not suitable for frequently modified data. As the archive data is retained for one year or more, it may result in higher credit consumption for such data.Archive is best suited for the data that rarely changes and requires higher retention.


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