User`s guide
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7.3.7.4. Grandfather-Father-Son scheme
At a glance
• Daily incremental, weekly differential, and monthly full backups
• Custom day for weekly and monthly backups
• Custom retention periods for backups of each type
Description
Let us suppose that we want to set up a backup plan that will regularly produce a series of daily (D),
weekly (W), and monthly (M) backups. Here is a natural way to do this: the following table shows a
sample two-month period for such a plan.
Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa Su
Jan 1—Jan 7
D D D D W - -
Jan 8—Jan 14
D D D D W - -
Jan 15—Jan 21
D D D D W - -
Jan 22—Jan 28
D D D D M - -
Jan 29—Feb 4
D D D D W - -
Feb 5—Feb 11
D D D D W - -
Feb 12—Feb 18
D D D D W - -
Feb 19—Feb 25
D D D D M - -
Feb 26—Mar 4
D D D D W - -
Daily backups run every workday except Friday, which is left for weekly and monthly backups.
Monthly backups run every fourth Friday, and weekly backups run on all other Fridays.
• Monthly ("Grandfather") backups are full;
• Weekly ("Father") backups are differential;
• Daily ("Son") backups are incremental.
Parameters
You can set up the following parameters of a Grandfather-Father-Son (GFS) scheme.
Start backup at: Specifies when to start a backup. The default value is 12:00 PM.
Back up on: Specifies the days on which to perform a backup. The default value is
Workdays.