V12 GFS monthly fulls with daily incrementals

[mkretzer]

About "GFS monthly fulls with daily incrementals" in V12: Correct me if i am wrong but this is the first time Veeam provides incremental backup support together with GFS, correct?

What happens if the monthly full backup takes multiple days? Will incremental backup work while the full backup is still being created?

[Dima P.]

Hi mkretzer,

I believe you are referring to v12 improvements for the GFS media pools in tape support, did I get it right? With v12 we allow to use daily media set with monthly media set meaning that you can take fulls and incermentals within the daily tape outs and enable monthly GFS within the same GFS media pool for periodic full backups with a longer retention. With v11 it was possible to use daily only with weekly full media set and now you can do monthly and/or weekly depending on your tape rotation schema.

[mkretzer]

So its not about GFS jobs where incrementals were not possible? They are still not possible?

[Dima P.]

If we are talking tape backup - you can configure GFS media pool with daily media set and incremental will land this media set.

[mkretzer]

Edit: Understood, i just read it wrong. What happens if the full is still running?

[Dima P.]

If we do not have a full backup in the daily media set on tape we must start new chain from the full (so daily will have a full backup). Usually it happens during initial backup to the GFS media pool with daily.

If GFS Monthly and/or GFS Weekly are scheduled at the day when you have a full backup at the primary job then single full backup goes only to the elder media set while linked incrementals will go to the daily media set.

[mkretzer]

Ok, can the daily be written to tape while the full is still writing somehow?

Weekly takes 5 days for all our data.