Define Retention Policy

The final step in creating a protection plan is to define a retention policy, which specifies how long to keep your protected data.

1. From the Retention Policy table, define the initial Continuous Data Protection (CDP) retention window in the Retain all data for field.

   This field indicates the period of time to maintain write fidelity between the source and target LUNs. Enter a number and specify whether it is the number of hours, days, weeks, months, or years. This number indicates the period during which you would like to keep all data changes. The exact length of time defined for this setting is dictated by the application recovery requirements, but typically is limited to 48 hours, or less.

2. Select Retain only bookmarks for older data if you want to keep sparse data for data older than the initial CDP retention window.
   By retaining just the bookmarks, the Oracle MaxRep Replication Engine maintains only the historical write data to restore the LUN to specific defined points in time rather than saving every write that occurs on the LUN in the retention log.
3. Specify the amount of storage space for the retention logs in the Restrict retention storage space to field.
   Use this storage space restriction to not allow protected LUNs within a single protection plan to take an unnecessary proportion of the retention log space.

   Note: To specify how the system processes the Restrict retention storage space to warning, set the On insufficient storage space option.
4. Select the insufficient storage space option from the On insufficient storage space list.
   Valid choices:

   • Purge older retention logs

   • Pause replication

   When there is insufficient storage space, you can purge older retention logs or pause replication. For synchronous replication, Oracle recommends that you select Purge older retention logs. In the event that the Oracle MaxRep Replication Engine deletes older retention logs, the system sends an alert indicating that the retention window is not being met.
5. On the Alert when storage space utilization reaches field, set the threshold for sending an alert when retention logs reach a percentage of the available storage.
   Oracle recommends keeping the default 80% setting.
6. From the Storage path list in the Specify Retention Storage Path table, select a path to the appropriate retention volume.
   Result:

   The volume appears in the Retention Volumes table. If the table is empty, check the following:

   • Ensure that the retention LUN is created on the target Oracle FS System. In the Oracle MaxRep GUI use the Settings > Manage Oracle Storage > Re-Discover option.

   • Ensure that the retention LUN is mapped to the secondary Replication Engine. Use the Map LUN option of the Toolkit for MaxRep under the Settings tab.

7. Click Next.