Abstract: A data management system (DMS) may capture snapshots of a computing object in accordance with a service level agreement (SLA). The DMS may store the captured snapshots in a cluster of storage nodes at the DMS and/or transmit the snapshots to one or more external archive locations. Which archive location to store given snapshots of the computing object may be based on archival policies defined in the SLA. Some snapshots may be stored locally at the DMS, some snapshots may be stored in one archive location of a set of multiple candidate archive locations, and some snapshots may be stored in more than one archive location of the set of multiple candidate archive locations. A retention duration for each snapshot may be independent of the archive location for the snapshot. For recovery purposes, a user may specify from which archive location the user selects to retrieve a snapshot.