GFS Weekly Keeps Incrementals
  • Jon T
    2
    I have my GFS-based backup plan to keep backups for 14 days and the last 4 full weeklies. I do a full backup every Sunday. What I'm not expecting is shown in the attached screen clip. The program is marking the full backups as weeklies as expected, but it's also retaining that week's incrementals as well, even when they are older than 14 days.

    I was expecting (and desire) that only the full backups would be retained. The incrementals are taking up more storage than I want. Any ideas? Should the full backup be on another day instead of Sunday?

    Thanks!

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    Jon T Options
  • Jon T
    2
    Now that I look at this again, it will be interesting to see what happens on August 29th, when all the incrementals in the August 8th weekly are older than 14 days. Maybe that's when they get purged.

    I'm guessing now that the program can't purge earlier incrementals that are older than 14 days (like the August 9th one) because they're still needed in the chain to make the ones that aren't yet older than 14 days (like the August 14th one) still usable.
    Jon T Options
  • Sergey
    6
    ↪Jon T

    I was going to get in to lengthy explanation about chain and dependency and etc, but you got there with the second glance at the screenshot :)
    So yes, once ALL the increments in a chain fall under the retention settings only at that point we can remove them all. This is because without prior incremental parts the later parts are just bytes.

    Also, I really like your schedule. So unless something on your end comes up - weekly fulls on Sundays is very good.
    Sergey Options
  • Jon T
    2
    ...and after the August 29th backup, all the incrementals in the first weekly fell outside the 14 day window, and they were all purged together, leaving just the base full backup which remains on the weekly retention schedule.

    For space planning purposes, I need to plan for these "extra" incrementals that need to hang around a bit longer to maintain the chain. In the case of my plan, that's an extra six daily incrementals in the oldest weekly still needing to keep its chain to satisfy the 14-day overall retention.

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    Jon T Options
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