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GFS Backup to Tape

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The GFS tape job creates yearly archive for the source VMs by the GFS scheme. The GFS archive includes one yearly backup and a number of weekly, monthly and quarterly backups.

To create a GFS archive on tape, you need to create a GFS media pool and target a backup to tape job to it. Technically, a GFS job is a variant of backup to tape job. When you select a GFS media pool as target, the job schedule automatically changes to the GFS mode.

As a source, you can use any backup job with any backup method: forever forward incremental, forward incremental or reversed incremental.

GFS Backup to Tape Note:

Do not use backup copy jobs with the GFS retention to create a GFS tape archive. The tape job do not archive the GFS restore points from disk.

The GFS job starts periodically and writes to tape a full backup. Depending on the schedule, the backup is stored as weekly, monthly, quarterly or yearly. To distinguish between these periods, the GFS media pool has 4 pre-defined media sets: weekly, monthly, quarterly and yearly. The job runs on days that are set in the job schedule for each period, for example:

Every Sunday for the weekly backup
Every 1st Sunday of each month for the monthly backup
Every 1st Sunday of each quarter for the quarterly backup
On 1st Sunday in January for the yearly backup.

For each media set, you can set the overwrite protection period. For example, the weekly backups must be stored for 4 weeks, and the first can be deleted after the job creates the monthly backup. The yearly backup must be stored for a year until it is replaced by the next yearly backup. You can set the retention that complies with your organization's backup storage policy and meets your storage capacity.

If the schedule for backup periods overlap, only the backup for the media set with the longest retention will be archived. For example, if "the first Sunday of January" is the date for the monthly, the quarterly and the yearly backup, only the yearly backup will be stored, and the monthly and the quarterly backups will be skipped.

You can manually create a restore point for any backup period at any time with the Active full option. Veeam will copy or synthesize the most recent full backup possible for the selected period.