Contracted (purchased) protected space
Contracted (purchased) protected space is the size of data purchased to be protected. You can find this in your order documentation.
Do not confuse with protected space.
Fair Use Policy
For a single backup job of a client, the protected space will be larger than the space used on disk on the secondary (cloud) CFA. Once versioning comes into play (scheduled backups are running), this will change, and the actual used space will be larger than the protected space.
For the Infrascale Backup & Disaster Recovery–Cloud, the Fair Use Policy allows for the actual used space on the secondary (cloud) CFA to be as much as 3 times the contracted protected space.
For the Infrascale Backup & Disaster Recovery–Local, the Fair Use Policy allows for the actual used space on the secondary (cloud) CFA to be as much as 2 times the contracted protected space.
Learn more about Infrascale Backup & Disaster Recovery offerings.
Once the Fair Use limit is nearly reached or is reached, you have the option to either reduce the actual used space by using the retention policy to remove some versions, or to increase your contracted protected space so the contracted protected space is greater than or equal to $^1/_3$ ($^1/_2$ for Infrascale Backup & Disaster Recovery Local) your actual space usage.
With no retention policies, 80% of customers are within the Fair Use Policy.
With retention policies enabled, 99% of customers are within the Fair Use Policy.
Overages and billing
An overage occurs when the amount of actual protected space (whether on the primary or on the secondary CFA) is larger than the contracted protected space.
This can happen when the retention policies on the primary CFA versus the secondary (cloud) CFA are different—that is, keeping more jobs on the secondary than on the primary. In this case, you have to either upgrade your subscription by increasing the amount of the contracted protected space, or to reduce the actual protected space being used.
Protected space
Protected space is the size of the total protected data on all clients prior to compression and deduplication.
Learn more about protected space and how to reduce it.
Do not confuse with contracted protected space.
Retention policies
Backups can be configured to daily, weekly and monthly roll-ups, whereas previously all restore points were preserved. For customers who perform frequent backups, this requires far less space on the CFA and prevents the need to replace overfilled hardware. In addition, this allows customers to configure long-term retention to optimize cost and benefit requirements.
Learn more about retention settings on the CFA.
Used on disk
Used on disk is the actual space used on the CFA after the backup data compression and deduplication. It includes all versions of the backup jobs.
On the primary CFA, this should be managed to ensure there is adequate disk space to run the system.
On the secondary (cloud) CFA, space used on disk is governed by our Fair Use Policy.