Set tape catalog retention for a protection group
Updated: May 13, 2016
Applies To: System Center 2012 SP1 - Data Protection Manager, System Center Data Protection Manager 2010, System Center 2012 R2 Data Protection Manager
DPM maintains metadata for each tape in a database, referred to as the tape catalog. You can manage the retention settings for the tape catalog to determine when the catalog is pruned, which consists of removing entries from the catalog. DPM automatically prunes the catalog when the retention range for the protection group expires, but you can direct DPM to prune the catalog for all protection groups sooner to reduce the size of the database as follows:
In DPM Administrator Console, go to the Protection view and select a protection group.
Click Specify tape catalog retention. To prune the catalog when the retention range expires, select Prune catalog when protection group retention range expires. To prune the catalog for a specific tape duration, select Prune catalog for tapes older than, and then select the tape duration that you want to use.
Note that you can’t retain catalog data longer than the retention range for the protection group.
If you want DPM to alert you when the DPM database reaches a specific size, in the DPM Database section, select Alert me when the DPM database size reaches, and then specify the size of the database.