Was so looking forward to v9 GFS, but it has no daily pool

[adept1]

My company is still insisting on having a daily backup to tape, so I've been using Veeam 8 creatively to simulate GFS as best I can.

For me, the biggest feature of v9 was true GFS support. However, upon installing v9 a few days ago I see that the pools are are weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly. As far as I can tell there's no way to change this.

Am I the only person who still needs to do daily backup to tape?

[nielsengelen]

If you do a normal backup to tape job this will cover your daily copies. A GFS job is a variant of backup to tape job where the job schedule automatically is set to the GFS mode.

[adept1]

Are you suggesting that I have 2 tape jobs? One normal one and one GFS one?

Thanks,
adept1

[nullifi]

I am in the process of setting up GFS tape jobs. I was somewhat disappointed in no daily option as well. Though, having two tape jobs is certainly better than 4.

[veremin]

Are you suggesting that I have 2 tape jobs? One normal one and one GFS one?

Correct. One for daily needs, another for long-term archival. Thanks.

[Shestakov]

Note that you need to create 2 media pools in this case, GFS and standard one.

[adept1]

Got that - thanks, but what about the job scheduling? Currently my tape job is set to run upon completion of my regular backup job. If I have two tape jobs how do you recommend I manage the scheduling aspect of it?

[Shestakov]

If you have multiple writers, the jobs can work in parallel, if you have just one, make an according schedule.

[veremin]

Got that - thanks, but what about the job scheduling? Currently my tape job is set to run upon completion of my regular backup job.

You might want to switch "daily" job to daily schedule (to be run from Monday to Friday) and let GFS job archive restore points during weekend. Thanks.

[ekisner]

Note that you need to create 2 media pools in this case, GFS and standard one.

I would point out that this is not sufficient. You are not able to schedule a job with just incremental backups - it must include the VBKs. At which point the GFS job becomes redundant, backing up data which is already backed up. I suppose you could just schedule it to run the monthly/quarterly/yearly jobs only though.. hmm. I might just do that.

[Shestakov]

Erik,
That`s the only way to have daily backups stored on tapes.

[Dima P.]

Hi folks,

Thanks for pushing – we will discuss are you thought with the team for sure. A friendly reminder - we are tracking the GFS improvement requests in this thread Cheers!

[marmaj]

We are in a similar spot: our company policies mandate creation and off-siting of daily tapes. Our outgoing ArcServe backup system that Veeam 9.0 is replacing has a "classic" G-F-S (monthlies, weeklies and dailies) rotation, with dailies being picked up by an Iron Mountain driver on a regular basis.

Since we are in no position to change this policy, we are forced by the current G-F-S scheduling (not trying to nit-pick, but it really is GrandGrandFather-GrandFather-Father-Son [GG-G-F-S] with four nested rotation loops) to go through unnecessary hoops, in order to accomplish creation of the daily tapes for off-siting. It uses the granularity of "every-week", while the "classic" G-F-S has a granularity of "every-day". With v9.0 G-F-S we can not easily create the daily tapes. I view this as a deficiency in design, and I only can hope that Veeam product team is going to consider the following changes/additions to the current v9 G-F-S scheduling via GUI to make it better:

• 1. Add dailies, allow them to be overwritten every one, two, three or four weeks. Allow them to be scheduled on any day of the week, or any combination of days of the week. Allow them to be either turned ON of OFF.
  2. Add ON/OFF for the Quarterly schedule.
  4. Add ON/OFF to the current Yearly schedule.

The archival schedule would look then like this:

• 1. DAILY Backup: (choose any one, or any combination of: Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu, Fri, Sat) + (overwrite every 1 or 2 or 3 or 4 weeks) + (ON/OFF)
  2. WEEKLY backup: no change
  3. MONTHLY backup: no change
  4. QUARTERLY backup: add (ON/OFF)
  5. YEARLY backup: add (ON/OFF)

This will accomplish the following:

• A. Allow for a GrandGrandFather-GrandFather-Father-Son-GrandSon (GG-G-F-S-GS) rotation
  B. Allow for a selection of any of the following:
  • * GG-G-F-S
    * GG-G-F
    * G-F-S
    * G-F-S-GS, or
    * F-S-GS

And it would be divine, simple and logical in my view.

Please feel free to contact me should you have any questions.

Best regards,

Marek.

[Shestakov]

Hello Marek and welcome to the community!

Looks like everything you want to achieve is possible in current version of product.
The main change is to keep daily backups in the same Media pool with GFS(means weekly/monthly/quarterly/yearly) ones?

We will take your opinion into account!

[marmaj]

Looks like everything you want to achieve is possible in current version of product.

Yes, it is possible, but it is a bit cumbersome and not readily apparent, forcing some calls to your TS, no doubt...

The main change is to keep daily backups in the same Media pool with GFS(means weekly/monthly/quarterly/yearly) ones?

Exactly. That would streamline all tapes schedules and backups and reporting. Much cleaner and easier to follow for busy system administrators; the only thing they need to do is to go into one spot for everything.

We will take your opinion into account!

Much obliged!

Marek.

[Shestakov]

Thanks for you feedback, Marek!
We`ve had some similar requests before, so it`s probably time to add it into the road map.

[bucoops]

Another vote from me - the company requires backups to be offline (can anyone say crypto?) so whilst d2d are useful we still need a daily d2t to comply with our requirements. So please add a daily GFS ability as soon as you can! Ideally with the ability to do the d2d portion as once a week full with daily incrementals that are then combined to make the full tape.

thanks

[Shestakov]

Thanks for your feedback, Richard!