User Guide

Feb 26—Mar 4

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.

Weekly/Monthly: Specifies which of the days selected in the Back up on field you want to

reserve for weekly and monthly backups. A monthly backup will be

performed every fourth such day. The default value is Friday.

Keep backups: Specifies how long you want the backups to be stored in the archive. A

term can be set in hours, days, weeks, months, or years. For monthly

backups, you can also select Keep indefinitely if you want them to be

saved forever.

The default values for each backup type are as follows.

Daily: 7 days (recommended minimum)

Weekly: 4 weeks

Monthly: indefinitely

The retention period for weekly backups must exceed that for daily

backups; the monthly backups' retention period must be greater than

the weekly backups' retention period.

We recommend setting a retention period of at least one week for daily

backups.

Advanced settings: To specify Advanced scheduling settings (p. 171), click Change in the

Advanced settings area.

At all times, a backup is not deleted until all backups that directly depend on it become subject to deletion as

well. This is why you might see a weekly or a monthly backup remain in the archive for a few days past its

expected expiration date.

If the schedule starts with a daily or a weekly backup, a full backup is created instead.

Examples

Each day of the past week, each week of the past month

Let us consider a GFS backup scheme that many may find useful.

 Back up files every day, including weekends