GFS Scheduling

[Strecker25]

Hi, I have a trivial question around building a GFS media pool.

We need to retain the following:

Year 1: 12 monthly backups
Year 2: 4 Quarterly backups
Year 3: 1 Yearly backup

I can't figure out how to schedule this. In the media pool I have:

Monthly media set overwrite: 12 months
Quarterly Media set overwrite: 4 quarters
Year Media Set overwrite: 1 year

What I believe will happen though, is the monthly backups will be created and retained properly. The quarterly backups will run quarterly, but also expire in year 1, and the same will happen to the yearly backup.

In order to keep only quarterly backups for year 2, do I also have to retain 4 quarterlys from year 1? and same for yearly, although we only need one for year 3 do I need to set it to retain 3 yearly and keep all 3? it doesn't seem like there is a way to only have certain types based on age and not keep their "newer" counterparts.

If that is true, does this accomplish our requirement?

Monthly media set overwrite: 12 months
Quarterly Media Set Overwrite: 8 quarters
Yearly Media set overwrite: 3 years.

[lyapkost]

Hi, Ryan. 3-8-12 overwrite periods are correct. If you keep all your backups in one location there is an easy way to achieve your goal. Set gfs schedule to overlap yearly, quarterly and monthly dates (and overwrite periods 3-8-12). If a date overlaps, the backup will be placed to the higher media set. Schedule for example: first sunday of the year for yearly, first sunday of first month of each quarter for quarterly and first sunday of each month for monthly. As a result you will have 1 yearly backup for year 3, 3 quarterly + 1 yearly (which makes 4 total) backups for year 2, 8 monthly + 4 quarterly backups (12 total) for year 1.

If you move different media sets to different locations then you need to make a schedule without overlapping (first sunday Y, second sunday Q, third sunday M for example). And actually I don't understand how is it possible not to keep 'newer' counterparts. Only if you keep your 3-year-old-full-backups on hard drive and place them on tape after 3 years.

[Strecker25]

That makes sense, once we drew it out it was much clearer. Good to know about the overlap as well, that will save us some tapes. Thanks!