Incremental tapes - can GFS be used as the full backup start

[EdNewman]

Hi All, I've been doing lots of reading around who to do incremental backups to tape in conjunction with GFS backups.
Currently we have setup a simple backup job that does a full backup once a year and then incremental backups Mon - Fri. We also run a GFS job every Saturday.

So my question is, if we want to do an incremental restore, would the chain of tapes required to do the restore go back to the last full GFS backup or all the way back to when the full simple backup was taken?

Cheers,
Ed.

[Shestakov]

Hi Ed,

GFS job every Saturday

Do you mean backup-to-tape job targeted at GFS Media pool or backup copy job with GFS retention?
If the first, yes, you need the whole chain to restore from the latest restore points.

we have setup a simple backup job that does a full backup once a year and then incremental backups Mon - Fri

This way you will have a chain of 260+ restore points. I would recommend to use forever forward backup method.
Thanks!

[EdNewman]

Thanks very much for your quick response. I guess I wasn't being very clear, I did mean a GFS to tape. So to summerise let me try and explain this way:

1st of the month = Full simple backup to tape of a forever forward incremental job to disk
2nd of the month = Simple incremental to tape of a forever forward incremental job to disk
3rd of the month = Simple incremental to tape of a forever forward incremental job to disk
4th of the month = Simple incremental to tape of a forever forward incremental job to disk
5th of the month = GFS backup to tape of a forever forward incremental job to disk
6th of the month = Simple incremental to tape of a forever forward incremental job to disk

To restore the backup taken on the 6th of the month do I need all of the tapes going back to the 1st, or just the tapes from the 5th and 6th?

Cheers,
Ed.

[Shestakov]

GFS backup to tape and simple backup to tape are targeted on different independent media pools, so if you want to restore from increments, you need the whole chain of increments up to the full backup.

> we have setup a simple backup job that does a full backup once a year
> Simple incremental to tape of a forever forward incremental job to disk

If job has full backup scheduled it doesn't produce forever forward chain.
Thanks!

[EdNewman]

Thanks very much for your respons.

Again I wasn't very clear, it is only the simple tape job that does a full backups once a year.

I will need to rethink our backup to tape procedure, I do find it really odd that incremental backups wasn't included in the GFS backups.

Ed.

[Shestakov]

In this case you need backups only from the 5th month.
Thanks