Dell PowerFlex Appliance with PowerFlex 4.x Administration Guide

File-level retention

File-level retention protects files from modification or deletion until a specified retention period.

Protecting a file system using file-level retention enables you to create a permanent and unalterable set of files and directories. File-level retention ensures data integrity and accessibility, simplifies archiving procedures for administrators, and improves storage management flexibility.

There are two levels of file-level retention:

• Enterprise: Protects data from changes that are made by users and storage administrators using SMB, NFS, and FTP. An administrator can delete a file-level retention enterprise file system which contains locked files.
• Compliance: Protects data from changes that are made by users and storage administrators using SMB, NFS, and FTP. An administrator cannot delete a file-level retention compliance file system which contains locked files. File-level retention compliance complies with SEC rule 17a-4(f).

File-level retention enterprise is intended for self-regulated archiving while file-level retention compliance is intended to assist those companies that must comply with regulations such as SEC rule 17a-4(f). The main difference is that file-level retention compliance performs write verification to ensure the quality and accuracy of the storage media recording process and prevents any modification or deletion of protected files by administrators.

The following restrictions apply:

• File-level retention is available on PowerFlex Manager 4.6 and later.
• Once file system is created, file-level retention cannot be enabled, disabled, or changed to another type.
• File-level retention compliance does not support restoring from a snapshot.
• When refreshing using a snapshot, both file systems must be at the same file-level retention level.
• A cloned file system has the same file-system retention level as the source and cannot be modified.
• GNS creation is not allowed for a file-system retention enabled file system.

File-level retention is configured during file system creation.