GFS - Keeping the first full for yearly?

[BrianBuchanan]

When configuring a new job with Grandfather, Father, Son, is the first full backup kept for the yearly period?

It seems that no backup will be kept for a year until January. Should I just change the "January" to the current month?

[veremin]

Are you planning to enable multiple GFS options (weekly, monthly, yearly)? I'm wondering, because GFS flag assignment logic might vary depending on number of options selected. More information can be found here. Thanks!

[BrianBuchanan]

Thank-you. That explains it quite clearly. It's not the algorithm I was hoping for.

Example:
- Weekly Wednesday (keep 4)
- Monthly First week (keep 6)
- Yearly January (keep 5)

Under the current algorithm (from the link except I'm shifting to the second week of the month)
- These backups occur in the 2nd week of February
Monday is an Incremental
Tuesday is a full
Wednesday is the schedule period for the weekly, waits for a full
Friday a Full, it gets marked as a weekly, but not monthly (second week of the month), and not yearly.

First week of March:
Monday is an Incremental
Tuesday is a full
Wednesday is the schedule period for the weekly, waits for a full
Friday a Full is run, it gets marked as a weekly, then monthly.

The problem is December comes around and there are no backups from the beginning of the cycle. Theoretically we are keeping a Grandfather backup for 5 years, but that backup does exist until the first time January comes around.

I can't give a full flowchart, but I suggest that the backup gets flagged based on how much time has passed; if more than 7 days (or no previous exists) it gets marked a Weekly, if more than 30 days from the last monthly (or no previous exists) gets marked Monthly and if more than 365 days from the last yearly (or no previous exists), gets marked Yearly.

That's a pretty rough outline of my suggestion, but this way when you are 11 months in, you still have that very first full backup, and it's kept for 5 years.

Also, logically, a son can't exist before it's father, and you can't have a father before a grandfather. You need the Grandfather first, then the Father, then the son.