Orphaned archives

An orphaned archive is an archive that is no longer associated with a protection plan or a registered workload. For example, an archive becomes orphaned when its protection plan is revoked or deleted, or when the protected workload is deleted.

For Microsoft 365 backups, the Cyber Protect console also checks the seat of the archive. One seat can have several archives, for example, a mailbox archive and a OneDrive archive. An archive is not orphaned while its seat is still protected. For example, a user is converted to a shared mailbox. The shared mailbox does not have a Microsoft 365 license for OneDrive, so the OneDrive of this user is no longer backed up. However, the OneDrive archive is not orphaned, because the mailbox of the same seat is still protected.

For archives that were created before version 26.10, the console checks the seat only for OneDrive and mailbox archives. For archives that were created in version 26.10 or later, the console also checks the seat for SharePoint Online and Microsoft Teams archives.

On the Backup storage tab, the Cyber Protect console shows the orphan status only for Microsoft 365 backups that are stored in the cloud storage. The orphan status is not shown for Google Workspace backups or for backups in Microsoft 365 Backup Storage. The console updates the orphan status once a day, and when you refresh the backup location.

You can delete orphaned Microsoft 365 archives manually, or automatically once a day by using a cloud cleanup plan.

The Cyber Protect console has two types of cleanup plans:

• Local cleanup plans run on a local agent, which is a protection agent that is installed on a workload. They delete outdated backups according to their retention rules, in any supported backup location, including the cloud storage. They do not delete cloud-to-cloud backups.
• Cloud cleanup plans run on the cloud agent. They delete only orphaned Microsoft 365 archives in the cloud storage.