A storage lifecycle consists of one or more storage units. A data classification can be selected for the storage lifecycle, which applies to all of the storage units in the lifecycle. For example, the data might be classified as gold or silver.

Data classifications are useful when backup data must meet different requirements. For example, email data can have different retention and storage requirements than financial data. To take into account the different needs of each type of data, the data is assigned to different storage lifecycles.

A backup policy is used to associate backup data with a data classification. Data from the policy can be stored only in a storage lifecycle policy with the same data classification.

Once data is backed up in a storage lifecycle policy, the data is managed according to the storage lifecycle configuration. The storage lifecycle defines what happens to the data from the initial backup until the last copy of the image has expired.