Each retention policy must include a retention period in months or years. Data Archive uses the retention period to calculate the expiration date for records to which the policy applies. A record expires on its expiration date at 12:00:00 a.m. The time is local to the machine that hosts the Data Vault Service. The retention period can be indefinite, which means that the records do not expire from the Data Vault.

After you create a retention policy, you can edit it or delete it. You can edit or delete a retention policy if the retention policy is not assigned to an archived record or to an archive job that is running or completed. Data Archive assigns retention policies to records when you run the archive job.

To change the retention period for a subset of records after you run the archive job, you can change the retention period for the records through Data Discovery.