Backup: GFS retention + synthetic full to tape

[Regnor]

I've just noticed that with forever incremental backup you cannot use the new GFS retention.
On the other hand if I need daily (synthetic) fulls to tape, I do need to configure the job as forever incremental.

Any ideas about how we could get GFS retention + daily full backups to tape combined working with a signle job?
Reverse incremental can't be used as it still needs (active) fulls for GFS.
I've thought about creating daily synthetic fulls with the backup job itself, which won't cause storage problems on ReFS, but I'm not sure about the impact.

[HannesK]

Hello,
yes, GFS is is the opposite of "incremental forever"

For daily synthetic fulls: I heard it from customers using it since more than a year to offload to capacity tier on a daily basis. Nobody can be sure about the impact as it depends on the amount of data you, REFS version etc. But I would say, that it is worth a try.

Best regards,
Hannes

[Regnor]

Hi Hannes,

How much data does this customer have and how long is the retention on disk?
In theory with ReFS it shouldn't make a difference whether I do 14 days forever incremental or 14 days daily synthetic full.
Or do I miss something here?

[HannesK]

Hello,
the retention on disk is as always: the software ensures, that you don't have less restore points than configured. You can simulate it with the restore point simulator https://rps.dewin.me/ (check the REFS checkbox)

It takes some space for metadata, but in general you are right. No real difference in disk space usage

Best regards,
Hannes