The following best practices are for efficient data lifecycle management:

• To get more disk space before data lifecycle management expires any backup sets, you can delete unwanted backup sets manually in Backup Exec. Do not use Windows Explorer or a Windows command prompt to delete backup files.

  Note:

  By default, the data lifecycle management process runs every four hours. Data lifecycle management also runs whenever the available disk space on the Backup Exec server is less than the low disk space thresholds that are set in the disk storage properties.

• To prevent data lifecycle management from expiring a backup set, you can manually retain a backup set. Backup Exec automatically retains all dependent backup sets as well. When you no longer want to retain a backup set, you must release it so that data lifecycle management can manage the retention period for it.

• When setting up the schedules for backups in a backup definition, avoid adding many incremental backups between full backups. The data lifecycle management process must search through each backup set to check dependencies; therefore, the more incrementals there are, the longer the DLM process takes.