Azure China End of Life - How to retain backup sets that are on Azure China configured cloud buckets with Backup Exec

Description

How to retain backup sets that are backed up on Azure China region Cloud Storage. 

Azure China based storage configuration is End of Life from Backup Exec 25.1 onwards, this means 

1.    You can no longer configure new Azure Cloud Storage or Cloud Dedupe Storage that has a bucket listed in the China region. 
2.    You can no longer import an older storage that resided in Azure China region that was configured with a previous version of Backup Exec. (This is essentially creating a new storage with import option).

However, if you already have a storage configured with Azure China region, you can continue to 
1.    Run backups to that storage – this is not blocked or stopped. 
2.    Run restores from that storage 
3.    Changing any storage settings with already configured storage. 

To retain backup sets the users can do the following. 
1.    Click on server-name or storage details - Storage name - Backup Sets that are backed up to the cloud storage (on Azure China region) and right click the backup set(s) you want to retain.

When you click on Retain, you can select user-defined or legal option, give the explanation to retain the backup set. This allows the backup sets to be retained and not cleaned up in Data Lifecycle Management process which cleans up old backup sets or backup sets that expired after a certain time. 

                                     
 
2.    When running backups targeted to Cloud storage in Azure China region , in backup options -> Storage select the maximum retention time you want to so that the backup sets are retained for a longer period.

                               
 
Note: You should change the Keep for value for all stages in the backup job so that all types of backup sets are retained for X amount of time. 

3.    You can duplicate the backup sets that are on Azure Cloud/Cloud dedupe storage (in China region) to a different storage (example: Disk , Deduplication Disk or Tape storage) , this allows you to retain or have multiple copies of the same backup set so that your data is safeguarded. 
Click on Storage -> Cloud Storage (on Azure China) -> Backup sets -> Select all backup sets and click Duplicate 

When you click duplicate -> it shows up a new dialog
a.    Select a different storage to duplicate to. 
b.    Select schedule as per need. 
c.    Select keep for -> if you select use source retention it will use the same amount of time for duplicate sets , if you uncheck source retention it will allow you to select the time period in days or months or years for retention. 
d.    Run the duplicate jobs , this will ensure safe storage of the backup sets on a different place so that the data is safe (Do not forget the retention time)