Standard media pools allow retention for X number of days whereas GFS let's you set up more restore points similar to backup jobs. You can keep weekly, monthly and yearly.  We use GFS over standard as it can synthesize some of the backups from the repository to tape.

https://helpcenter.veeam.com/archive/backup/100/vsphere/gfs_media_pools.html

Hi Chris

Thanks, i was maybe to open in my question. Can i have your considerations about putting active fulls and virtual actual fulls on tape?

RH

The fulls that go on tape are active fulls which get synthesized from the backups on disk.  So Veeam creates them to place on tape.