Can somebody explain the use cases for GFS Backups?

[StoopidMonkey]

I work in the healthcare field and while the need for short term backups (2 months old or less) are pretty obvious, I'm having a hard time deciding on a GFS policy because I don't see what the use case would be for keeping point-in-time data snapshots for months, even YEARS, if we do not have any data purge policies in effect. In essence, we keep everything forever on live production systems. What are some real-world examples of why one would need to keep troves of weekly, monthly, or yearly GFS copies?

[PetrM]

Hi Chris,

The most common reason is to comply with the corporate policy requirements for data storage. I guess there are too many different cases and it's not possible to list all of them, usually, it's related to rarely used data. For instance, a SQL stored procedure started to fail and the last time it was running 6 months ago without problems, I need to restore a database in order to check its state from 6 months ago, or I need to restore a file/mail that created one year ago but it no longer exists on production and many other examples.

Thanks!

[StoopidMonkey]

So would you say that when it comes to GFS Archives, it's practically very rare for anybody to retain more than a year's worth of backup copies?

[PetrM]

Hi Chris,

I don't think that I can say that, it depends on specific requirements and use case, someone retains more than one year, and someone does not.

Thanks!