During a post-deployment review, a backup application keeps application-consistent copies for 7 years, a Data Domain snapshot schedule expires snapshots after 14 days, and retention lock is set to 1 year. Which statement best describes the effective protection for a file?

A Data Domain snapshot is a read-only, point-in-time copy of an MTree, used as a restore point for the MTree's state at that moment. Expiring a snapshot removes only that copy (its space is reclaimed at the next cleaning run); it does not delete the live files in the MTree. The backup application's copies are those live files, and the application keeps them for seven years and restores them directly, so the 14-day snapshot schedule has no effect on whether those restore points exist. Retention lock is a separate control: for its one-year period it prevents locked files from being modified or deleted, after which the application's own expiry governs them. Choosing the longest configured layer as authoritative gets the reasoning wrong, because the layers govern different things rather than competing on duration; the application decides when its copies expire, and retention lock only sets how long they are immutable. Saying retention lock makes every copy undeletable for seven years confuses the application's retention with the one-year lock period. Treating the shortest expiry as the limit on recoverability assumes the application depends on the snapshots, which it does not in this design. Exam caveat: a snapshot schedule only limits recovery for restores that rely on the snapshots themselves. Operational check: confirm that the application catalog points at live MTree files, then compare the lock period with the compliance requirement.