GFS best Strategy

Hi @miriam1989 , the main thing to be aware of is storage. Each GFS restore point is a full, so just be aware of that. If you haven’t reviewed it yet, I recommend reading up on GFS Long-term Retention in the User Guide. They even have a couple examples of how GFS works. 

Hope that helps.

Also, the articles of mine you read provide a good foundation of how it works as well 😊 I no longer use Backup Copy GFS (though may re-create) just because I implement 3-2-1-1-0 by other means. But, GFS is a good strategy to have for long-term retention.

The biggest thing to watch out for is storage and having enough.  If you plan things right then you will have enough storage.  As for GFS setup that is all depends on what your RPO/RTO and SLAs are for recovery should you not be able to use your daily backups.

Another thing to keep in mind is also the type of storage you are using and using the optimal settings as noted here - Backup job storage | Veeam Backup & Replication Best Practice Guide

One more thing to run through which helps with calculating requirements is the calculator where you can put in GFS as well - Veeam backup capacity calculator

These are all great points but remember that zero block clones on both XFS, ReFS and Object Storage are available to you for GFS. I think the term zero block goes a bit too far but expecting 2% for each GFS restore point is a conservative estimator.

In regards to strategy that shouldn’t be a IT decision, at least not alone. Get with your application and legal stakeholders and see what levels of risk and compliance you need to cover dictate. More often than not these days cyber insurance is going to be the primary driver.

All that being said I tend to consider the minimum having 3 months of weekly RP that are immutable and encrypted to give me a safety net for ransomware.

I really likes GFS and I try to use it in all my projects. A good way to use it is:

• 4 weekly
• 12 monthly
• 3 or 5 yearly

Of course that all these depends to the company and according with the backup policy.

Other important point that you have in mind is the storage. Try to use some device that have fast cloning. On this way you can safe space not having two full backups of the same data.

The information you provided is correct. These RPO times are generally used. Of course, necessary regulations may be required depending on legal obligations or the sector in which you operate.