Date: 04/07
Affected NV Version: N/A
OS Version: N/A
Plugin version: N/A
Application version: N/A
Description:
A brief explaination of the Grandfather/Father/Son GFS backup rotation
Symptoms:
One of the more common backup rotation strategies is the Grandfather/Father/Son (GFS) scheme. Below is a brief explanation and diagram of 2 rotation strategies that uses the GFS to create an effective backup strategy.
This scheme in its simplest form uses only 10 tapes but can be modify to meet your companies’ retention length, availability and integrity needs. In the rotation scheme, daily backup is known as Son, weekly backup is the Father and monthly backup is the Grandfather. The monthly backups are usually sent offsite for disaster recovery purpose. With 10 tapes in the rotation, your short-term recovery availability is limited to 6 days while long term recovery availability is 90 days once you have done a full rotation. By introducing more tapes and not reusing the monthly tapes, you can recovery up to a full year of data. This rotation strategy can also be modified to work with incremental and differential backup requirements as well.
See attachment for diagrams of two sample GFS Rotation scheme
A rotation scheme is just a part of your backup plan. Your final strategy should be based on your business needs and goals as relates to retention, availability and integrity policies.
BakBone SFDC Solution Number: 00002099
