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How to Use GFS Rotations

The Grandfather-Father-Son (GFS) rotation strategy is a method of maintaining backups on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. GFS backup schemes are based on a seven-day weekly schedule, beginning on any day of your choice. The primary purpose of the GFS scheme is to maintain a minimum standard and consistent interval at which to rotate and retire media. This scheme always uses the oldest media first.

You should perform a full backup at least once a week. On all other days, you can perform full or partial backups or no backup at all. The advantage of setting up a GFS rotation scheme is that once it is configured, you need only make sure the right media is in the drive for each day of the week.

From that time on, GFS tells you which media to use and manages the backups for you.

Note: Monthly backups are saved throughout the year and the media on which they are stored should be taken off-site for safekeeping. You can track these media using the Media Management Admin.

Important! GFS rotations create three media pools--daily, weekly, and monthly pools. You cannot entirely customize this rotation and the media used for the rotation scheme must be named automatically. Custom rotation schemes allow you to configure the properties of the scheme, such as the pool or pools involved, the days to back up, and other properties. Deduplication devices are an exception: even though deduplication devices cannot be assigned to media pools, you may still set up GFS rotations. For more information, see GFS Rotation Jobs on Deduplication Devices.