Retention policies
Alcion maintains a large number of backups for every protected resource (for example, users or sites). Here is the default retention policy applied for backups based on backup initiation time:
| Backup Tier | Backup Retention Period |
|---|---|
| 3X/day1 | 30 Days |
| Daily | 90 Days |
| Weekly | 26 Weeks |
| Monthly | Forever1 |
Security Plan subscribers have the ability to limit the maximum retention with Custom Policies
Multi-tiered retention
Alcion uses a multi-tiered retention policy. Within the 3X intra-day backup tier and with the above retention policy, Alcion stores 90 intra-day daily backups representing 30 days of 3X backups a day and will roll them out in a first-in, first-out (FIFO) manner. When a new intra-day backup is taken, the oldest intra-day backup (the 91st backup at this point) will be removed and potentially deleted.
Every 24 hours, one of the oldest intra-day backups that would be otherwise deleted is instead promoted to the daily backup tier. This means that the oldest intra-day backup from the past 90 days moves to the daily backup tier. Just like with the intra-day backup tier and with the above retention policy, Alcion stores 90 days of daily backups and will roll them out in a first-in, first-out (FIFO) manner. When a new intra-day backup is promoted to a daily backup, the oldest daily backup (the 91st backup at this point) will be removed and potentially deleted.
Weekly backups are selected from the oldest daily backups and follow the same promotion and FIFO roll out pattern described above.
Monthly backups generally follow the same scheme, but, depending on your plan and configuration, may never expire1.
Alcion account termination
The retention periods stated above are valid while the account in active and in good standing. Backups are 30 days after an Alcion account is closed or after 30 days of a grace period if the account is involuntarily closed.
Footnotes
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Your Alcion subscription plan might either cap the number of daily or monthly backups or allow you to reduce the retention period. More information is available on the Pricing page. ↩ ↩2 ↩3