Monthly backup job with GFS retention on an HLR

[Phyxiis]

Intended goal:

• Create a Backup Job (not backup copy job)

• Take an Active Full Backup of a VM Once a month (first Sunday - 1AM)

• Retain 3 of these monthly backups (current full [December], previous 2 months [November, October] full backups) with immutable flag set to true

• When the job runs in March, the October job (oldest/4th) is then deleted

• Note: these backups would be stored on our Hardened Linux Repository, which is set to only keep backups immutable for 10 days (I think GFS-flag supersedes the repo-immutable flag)

Running into either a lack of understanding of GFS, or if there's even a way to perform what we're intending.

Currently set up Backup Job:
Name of job - set
Virtual Machin(s) - set
Storage tab:
Backup proxy - set
Backup repo - our only backup repo which is a Linux hardened repo (10 day immutable flag set)
Retention policy - 1 restore point
GFS - 2 monthly
Advanced tab:
Incremental radio button
Create synthetic full on Sunday
Guest processing - set
Schedule - Run Monthly 1AM First Sunday

[Mildur]

Hi Alex

If you keep just 2 monthly gfs restore points, you only have the last 2 months.
In march, this will be march and February.
October will already be deleted by the retention policy.

If you want to keep the October gfs backup till march, you need to keep 5 monthly gfs restore points.

Thanks
Fabian

[Phyxiis]

That would be my understanding, having the GFS at 2 monthly is keeping the previous two months backups, and the retention policy of 1 restore point is keeping the current/most recently taken backup.

Why would I need GFS set to 5 monthly to keep Octobers backup until March? Is it related to being a "Synth Full" instead of the "Active Full"?

I did change from "Synthetic full" to "Active Full" so that I could utilize the "Last Sunday" option, whereas "Synthetic Fulls" would run every Sunday (not what we want). I made this change after posting as I noticed the date of "next run" was not what we wanted after playing around with it.

[Mildur]

Hi Alex

Why would I need GFS set to 5 monthly to keep Octobers backup until March?

Because you create monthly GFS backups -- > Take an Active Full Backup of a VM Once a month (first Sunday - 1AM)
Your provided retention --> Retain 3 of these monthly backups
And you wrote in your first topic --> When the job runs in March, the October job (oldest/4th) is then deleted

Your retention policy of 3 monthly GFS is too short to keep the monthly October 2022 backup until March 2023.
In March, you will only have backups from December 2022, January 2023, February 2023 and March 2023. And the December 2022 backup will be deleted by the retention policy. Not the October 2022 as you thought.

Is it related to being a "Synth Full" instead of the "Active Full"?

The type of the full is irrelevant for GFS backups.

Thanks
Fabian