GFS 2 questions - "Expire date" & Monthly backup

[StephanG]

Hi everyone,

i am about to finally get into cloud backup just to get rid of this.

I have set GFS
Weekly - overwrite after 3 weeks
Monthly - overwrite after 12 months

I have weekly tape backup starting at 2 am on Saturday. But the tapes have always the expire date around 4 pm on that Saturday. So the setting i need is 3 weeks minus 1 day. If i set 2 weeks i am afraid to overwrite tapes that should not be overwritten yet.
Same with the month tapes.
At the moment i mark them as free every week....
---------

The last monthly backup i forgot the mark them as free. So it was waitingTape - i marked it as free on Sunday. It then started - the success mail after the tape backup was like this:
Tape 180 Slot 33 1,4 TB 12,2 GB Monthly media set #388 29.08.2021 02:30
Tape 193 Slot 38 1,4 TB 12,6 GB Monthly media set #388 29.08.2021 02:30
Tape 136 Slot 42 1,4 TB 13,4 GB Monthly media set #388 29.08.2021 02:30
Tape 203 Slot 30 1,4 TB 3 GB Monthly media set #388 29.08.2021 02:30
Tape 77 Slot 11 1,4 TB 9,8 GB Monthly media set #388 29.08.2021 02:30
Tape 11 Slot 31 1,4 TB 718 GB Daily media set #272 03.11.2020 07:54
Tape 131 Slot 5 1,4 TB 10,4 GB Monthly media set #388 29.08.2021 02:30
Tape 82 Slot 16 1,4 TB 9,6 GB Monthly media set #388 29.08.2021 02:30
Tape 130 Slot 41 1,4 TB 551,9 GB Monthly media set #388 29.08.2021 02:30

Does that mean i need to export the "Daily" Media also?!? Or is there only a media because the backup job took too long? (34h)



BR
Stephan

[Dima P.]

Hello StephanG,

Unfortunately I did not get the question, can you please clarify? Tape media from the daily media set was not overwritten after the needed timeframe? Thank you!

[StephanG]

No.
I have "issues" with the week tapes and their expiration date.
If i set 3 weeks for retention it is too late and i have to set the tapes manually to "free" each Friday
If i would set them to 2 weeks - they get set "expired" almost a week to early.

[Dima P.]

Stephan,

Do you export those tapes out of your tape library? Do you use predefined set of tapes for weekly media set or you allow tapes to be added automatically from the free media pool?

If i would set them to 2 weeks - they get set "expired" almost a week to early.

Tapes will be expired on a logical level i.e. if this job or any other gfs tape job wont pick such tape, tape wont be overwritten and restore will be possible.

[StephanG]

The week tapes remain in the tape loader. Free tapes are allowed be added automatically.

Example next weekly: As you can see in the picture - the tapes will expire on Saturday afternoon. My weekly tape backup starts Saturday at 2:30 AM.
So it would be "Waiting tape" until afternoon if i do not mark them as free manually every friday.
https://pasteboard.co/PBq2mhidoqmY.png

If i set it to 2 weeks. They would expire way too early.