1. Basic Retention

Basic Retention provides two options for managing VMware backup recovery points:

• Day-Based Retention: Specifies the number of days to retain incremental recovery points. For example, you can configure BDRShield to keep recovery points for 30 days, ensuring that backups older than this period are automatically deleted to free up storage.
• Version-Based Retention: Allows you to retain a specific number of recovery points. For instance, if you configure it to keep the last 10 recovery points, older recovery points beyond this limit are automatically removed.

Use Case: Basic Retention is ideal for VMware environments with straightforward requirements, such as keeping recent recovery points for operational recovery while efficiently managing storage.

2. GFS (Grandfather-Father-Son) Retention

GFS retention takes a hierarchical approach to backup management, organizing recovery points into daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly categories:

• Daily (Son): Retains daily incremental recovery points for a specified number of days.
• Weekly (Father): Promotes one daily recovery point to a weekly recovery point, kept for an extended period.
• Monthly (Grandfather): Promotes one weekly recovery point to a monthly recovery point for long-term retention.
• Yearly: Optionally promotes one monthly recovery point to a yearly recovery point for archival purposes.

Use Case: GFS retention is best suited for VMware environments that need to meet compliance, audit, or disaster recovery requirements, where long-term backups are necessary alongside regular short-term backups.

By providing both Basic Retention (with day-based and version-based options) and GFS Retention, BDRShield ensures flexibility and efficiency in managing VMware backups, catering to diverse storage and recovery needs.