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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.

The GFS scheme stores only full backups. The GFS job copies a full backup from disk or synthesizes a virtual 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.

GFS Backup to Tape

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.