GFS and retention policy

[mpark]

Hi all,
I just started using Veeam 9 (away from Backup Exec, yay me!) and have some questions about GFS.
I want to set up GFS so that different backup group gets different weekly & monthly retention period, but same quarterly retention period and then gets backed up into the same tape media pool.
For example:
Server Group A retention policy:
Weekly: 2 weeks
Monthly: 0 months
Quarterly: 10 quarterly
Backup to Tape job(Quarterly) to : tape media pool 'A'

Server Group B retention policy:
Weekly: 4 weeks
Monthly: 1 month
Quarterly: 10 quarterly
Backup to Tape job(Quarterly) to : tape media pool 'A'

Server Group C retention policy:
Weekly: 5 weeks
Monthly: 12 months
Quarterly: 10 quarterly
Backup to Tape job(Quarterly) to : tape media pool 'A'

Let me know if this is possible, if not, any advice is appreciated.

Thanks in advance and hope you all have a great day!

Edit: Case #01721537

-Min

[Shestakov]

Hi Min and welcome to the community!
You can create GFS Media pools with custom GFS settings, i.e. each media set(yearly/quarterly/monthly) will have their own retention policy. Once the protection period is over, tapes will be reused in the same media pool.
So in your case you need to create 3 GFS media pools.
Thanks!

[mpark]

Hello Shestakov, thanks for the reply!
The way I wanted to setup is that the all the backup-to-tape job goes to one single tape media pool, say "Quarterly Archive" for archiving, while keeping different retention policies on weekly and monthlies for the Server groups stated above.
In case of having 3 GFS media pools, wouldn't that assign tapes to different media pools? So that, I can't dump all the backup jobs into "Quarterly Archive" media pool all together.

Thanks!

[Shestakov]

You can place tapes to the Free media pool and GFS media pools will take tapes from it upon request.

[mpark]

But won't that still create 3 separate tape media pools with 3 GFS media pools?
Let's say I have 3 server groups with 1TB in size, with 3 different 3 GFS assigned. Using LTO-5 tape with 1.5TB storage will leave me unused 0.5TB on each tape and I want to prevent that.
It is my understanding that using 3 GFS will assign 3 tapes for each media pools. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Thanks for the quick reply

[Shestakov]

GFS media pool is tape media pool. So "[create] 3 separate tape media pools with 3 GFS media pools..." doesn`t mean 9 pools, but 3.
However, if you want to have Weekly, Monthly and Quarterly media sets in each Media pool, you need 9 media sets.
The reason is retention policy, because protection period is to be defined in each media set.
If you used same retention policy for every Server Group, you would need just 1 media pool.
Thanks!

[mpark]

Sorry, I am confusing you here.
Yes, I do want to end up with:
-3 GFS media pools
-3 different media sets for weekly
-3 different media sets for monthly
-and only 1 media set for quarterly that 3 GFS media pools can access.

Will this be possible using GFS media pools?

Once again, sorry for the confusion!

[Shestakov]

I see your point now. Thanks for the explanation!
Your request makes sense, but unfortunately, it`s not possible to achieve in current version.
I`ll discuss it with R&D team though.

[mpark]

I see.
Thanks for your help!

[Shestakov]

You are welcome!
Once you have a question, don`t hesitate to ask!

[mpark]

Yes, forgot to ask!
When you setup GFS for weekly, monthly, and quarterly and you start a backup job to tape using this GFS, is the first job run as Quarterly?
How does Veeam determine when the quarterly job runs?

[Dima P.]

mpark,

It depends on the schedule you setup in tape job properties. If weekly, monthly, quarterly and yearly backup happen set to run on a same day and got overlapped the backup will go only to the media set with the longest retention to save your tape media usage.

[Shestakov]

It starts with the closest scheduled run.
By the way it`s recommended to schedule weekly/monthly/quarterly with overlaps to save tape space.