GFS Scenario query

[roballensch]

Hi, I've been playing around with Backup Copy jobs in an attempt to create a GFS retention for backups of VM's. I've read through the user guides and I'm still struggleing to get to grips with the whole thing.

What I want to do is create a backup job that will keep 14 restore points and then after this point creates a weekly full for 4 weeks, then a monthly for 12 months and finally a yearly.
I have the backup job for the 14 restore points (incremental) but when I create the copy job I'm not clear about some of the settings.
I have the copy every set to 7 days, I'm assuming this will run the copy job every 7days and create a full backup from available restore points in the backup job.
I have the restore points to keep set at its lowest (2) so I'm assuming this will just keep 2 restore points for the 7 day copy interval and then it will retain 4 x weekly, 12 x monthly and 1 annual full backup.

Is my thinking correct? Really grateful to anybody that can help me with this as I'm just not getting it, I think its the restore points to keep and copy every that are confusing me.

[Shestakov]

Hello Rob and welcome to the community!
You are right about backup job, but backup copy regular retention = 2 will create a chain of Full+increment.
GFS retention will create and keep 4 x weekly, 12 x monthly and 1 annual full. You may schedule weekly and monthly on the same day to avoid duplication.
Thanks!

[roballensch]

Hi,

Thanks for the reply, is there a way to set the copy job so I only get the full backup? I have another job making the fulls and increments and storing for 14 days and this job I want to purely keep full weekly and monthly jobs. Do I need to time the job with a 7 day timer (run every) that runs after the other job has created its full and is there a way to create a dependancy so it only runs after the full job has finished? Thanks

[Shestakov]

Due to backup copy job essence you need to have a regular chain of at least 2 backups. There is a workaround if you enable Read the entire restore point from source backup instead of synthesizing it from increments check box.
By the way, once you have another backup copy job to keep a chain of 14 restore points, why not to have just one job with regular and GFS retention?
Thanks!

[roballensch]

Hi, I was under the understanding that to get GFS retention of daily, weekly, monthly, annual retention that I needs a backup job for the daily and then a copy yo create the weekly and others. Is there another way to get GFS on a regular backup job without an additional copy job?

[DGrinev]

Hi Rob,

That's not possible to set up GFS retention for the backup job, it's only available in the backup copy job settings. Thanks!