Grandfather-Father-Son retention

In the Ultra Transcenders books

VBR-13

Each book explains Grandfather-Father-Son retention in context, with comparison tables and the common traps.

Terms in this definition

• Image tagging

  An Image Analysis feature producing single-word tags, each with a confidence score, for actions, scenery, objects and living things in an image.

Related terms

• backup copy job

  A job that takes backups that already exist and copies them, in the same format, to a second repository nearby or at another site, for extra copies and long-term GFS retention. It works from backups and never touches the source machines.

• backup to tape job

  Sends backups from a repository onto tape, for an offline copy that supports 3-2-1, with GFS media pools available for daily through yearly archives. It reads stored backups, not the original machines.

• file to tape job

  Sends data held on NDMP volumes, NAS shares, and Windows or Linux machines out to tape. A GFS variant can retain yearly, monthly and weekly archives.

• GFS media pool

  A dedicated pool of tapes used by GFS tape jobs, which writes data following a Grandfather-Father-Son rotation.

• rotated drives

  Removable USB or eSATA disks, swapped between sites, that act as a repository when the rotated hard drives setting is on, so Veeam can keep chains intact through each swap. GFS fulls cannot be kept on them, and a managed server can host just one such repository.

• short-term retention

  Holds restore points in a chain for a given number of days, seven by default for backup jobs, after which older ones are deleted. Chosen full backups can be kept for longer with GFS flags.

• WORM tape

  Media you can write to only once. It lives in its own pools (WORM or WORM GFS), ignores retention settings, and is kept apart from standard tapes.

• XFS

  A Linux file system. Turn on reflink and Fast Clone becomes available to Linux and hardened repositories, speeding up the building of GFS points and synthetic full backups.