Backup Copy GFS Options

[hayliz]

Hello everyone,
I have written a script with which I create copy jobs. I set the GFS options. This is working very well so far. My copy target is hardened repository.
What I have noticed, however, is that when I want to set up the copy job on the gui without GFS, I get the message: “Immutable backups feature requires the GFS retention policy enabled in the Backup Copy job settings.”
This can be bypassed with powershell. E.g. with the following lines.

$backupCopyJobs = Get-VBRBackupCopyJob -Name "test"
$gfsOptions = New-VBRComputerGFSOptions
Set-VBRBackupCopyJob -Job $backupCopyJobs -GFSOptions $gfsOptions

As a result, the check mark for GFS remains active, but no weekly, monthly and yearly backups are set up.
My question here is if this is intended and if I could have disadvantages because of e.g. immutability, retention etc.?

Thank you in advance!

[david.domask]

Hi hayliz,

It's a requirement for Hardened Repositories to periodically produce a full backup (active or synthetic), and same goes for Backup Copies. Your workaround will suppress the warning, correct, but it will leave the chain acting as Forever Forward Incremental that never merges, and you will end up with very long chains.

I would advise against the strategy as per the User Guide it results in an unsupported configuration, and may lead to unpredictable or difficult to manage issues down the line. If your hardened repository supports Fast Clone, then the default option of Synthetic GFS points should be enough and the Synthetic Fulls will be "space-less". (about the size of an increment)

[hayliz]

Hello David,
thank you very much for your feedback. We have activated GFS anyway. I was just surprised that it works.