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An excerpt from Veeam Long-Term Retnetion Policy (GFS):  https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backup/vsphere/gfs_retention_policy.html?ver=110 says:
"As soon as Veeam Backup & Replication assigns a GFS flag to a full backup file, this backup file can no longer be deleted or modified. Also, Veeam Backup & Replication does not apply short-term retention policy settings to the full backup file — that is, Veeam Backup & Replication ignores the backup file when determining whether the number of allowed backup files is exceeded."


I have the following configuration to backup vmware and running Veeam B&R version 11: Incremental backups run on weekdays at 9:00 PM, Retention Policy of 7 restore points, and Keep weekly full backups for: 4 weeks. Create synthetic full backups on Sunday.


1. When weekly synthetic full backup is created on Sunday, does it run on the same schedule as the daily backup setup at 9:00 PM? According to the article, it will be flagged as weekly GFS with Retention flag "W" and set aside for 4 weeks and ignored by short term retention policy.


2. Will a new full backup be created when first weekday incremental backup is created on Monday at 9:00 PM or only an incremental backup ( Saturday thru Monday)? If it is only an incremental backup created does it make sense to create a new full backup on Monday to start the new chain for ease of VM restore?


3. As I have set the short term Retention policy to 7 restore points, I assume there should be 7 incremental backups one restore point for each day’s incremental backup kept going forward. However, if the incremental backups are set to run only on weekdays with synthetic backup created on Sunday is set aside by GFS policy, there would be restore points for Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and a break until Sunday when the full synthetic is created. When incremental backup on Monday resumes, will this restore point contain incremental data after Friday’s incremental backup or after Sunday’s full synthetic backup?


In addition to this, I have a tape infrastructure as a secondary target to keep Weekly data for 4 weeks, Monthly data for 12 months and yearly data for 7 years. More questions on tape to follow depending on the answers here. Thank you for your time and suggestions in advance. 

Do I get it right, that your job is configured to run from Monday to Saturday, but not on Sunday? In that case a full backup would never be created. You need to also enable the schedule for the full backup day, and on that day instead of an incremental a (synthetic) full backup will be created.

Regarding 2: The full backup will only be created on the day you configure in the advanced storage settings, all other backups will be incremental. In terms of restore it won't make much difference on what day you create the full backup; it matters more for the Copy to Tape.

Regarding 3: With a retention of 7 restore points you would have at least 1 Fullbackup and 6 incrementals (if you configure the full backup correctly). In fact you will have up up 13 restore points, because the first chain with 7 points can only be deleted when the 7th restore point has expired on day 14. After a full backup the next incremental will reference to this full.

Take a look at the restore point simulator to find out how the retention and the different job settings work together.

http://www.rps.dewin.me/

1. Synthetic full uses the same schedule. (Edit: Like regnor mentioned, you need to have some schedule for the day you want the synthetic full, so if you do not want new backup from production for sunday, change synthetic full to friday)
2. Only incremental backup is created on Monday, it is incremental compared to synthetic full on sunday.  This starts a new chain, and no sense to create full bu on monday. With 7 restore point retention you will have 7-12 latest restore points on disk as the incrementals from previous chain can only be destroyed after you have F + 5 x inc + F (7 restore points)
3. The GFS Flagged Full backup has kind of a double function: a full backup to the current incremental chain and then later it is saved for long term retention. The term "Full backup is set aside" is bit misleading.

Thank you regnor and MikkoVanttnen both for excellent advise and helping clarify. Now it seems it might be beneficial for me to do the following:

  1. Create synthetic bull backups on Friday instead of Sunday: As we only run backups Monday to Friday.
  2. There should be no need for another full backup as the synthetic full archive will be available for 4 weeks and incremental backups start on Monday (that will have delta for Saturday, Sunday and Monday itself). 
  3. Tape scans GFS daily at 10:AM that will scan daily increment and full backups. Latest daily increment should be copied to tape and kept for 14 days, Weekly backup on Sunday should pickup synthetic Full created on Friday, Monthly backup on first Sunday of the month should pickup synthetic Full created on Friday and similarly Yearly backup should pickup synthetic Full created on Friday. 

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