MABS - how would restoring a VM from inactive protection work?

Question

Hello.
We have a MABS on-premise server currently backing up our (on-premise) hyper-v servers, and we're fairly happy with it.
What I'd like to know is: if I remove a protected server from its protection group and then decommission the server, deleting the VM... would the replica stored under the Inactive protection group be enough to fully restore the server in case the owners want to recover something as long as it's showing a recovery point under details?
And what would the retention policy be for recovery points under Inactive Protection, would they just be stored indefinitely until manually deleted?

(apologies if this a dumb question, and for the tags - couldn't find anything specific for MABS)
Thanks and regards

Answer 1

Hello@R C Thank you for reaching out to us at Microsoft Q&A forum. Happy to assist!

I see you have an interesting question about restoring inactive workload and how the retention policy works. Your understanding is correct. You can recover inactive protection data as long as long restore points are available. garbage collection will not take effect on inactive protection data sources. Although as a side note, being the data source set and marked to be on inactive and, assuming DPM Agent also uninstalled and not visible from DPM UI - which means tbl_AM_InstalledAgent will SET DELETE to 1 this Server ID – the recovery option while restoring data from recovery wizard UI needs to be alternate location. To restore to original location DPM Agent needs to be installed.

And what would the retention policy be for recovery points under Inactive Protection, would they just be stored indefinitely until manually deleted?
YES!

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Answer 2

Hello

Thank you for your question and reaching out. I can understand you are having query related to DPM retention.

As per MS : For disk based recovery points, the inactive protected data will remain as is forever since no new recovery points are being created. Tape and Online recovery points have an absolute expiry date and will be deleted after the expiry date has been crossed.

Reference :

https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/74020245-b9e0-431c-b9ef-c554b5b7800b/dpm-retention-period-for-inactive-protection-protected-data?forum=dataprotectionmanager

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