• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to footer
Vitanium logo

Vitanium

  • Home
  • Products & Services
    • Datahive cloud backup
    • Veeam cloud connect backup
    • Veeam cloud connect for MSPs
    • Veeam Cloud Connect Replication
    • Cloud email filtering
    • Cloud email archiving
    • Virus Protection
  • Solutions
    • Office 365 Solutions
    • Ransomware
    • Business continuity
    • GDPR
    • Backup for education
  • Pricing
    • Datahive backup
    • Veeam cloud connect
    • Cloud email filtering
    • Cloud email archiving
  • Partners
  • About
  • Blog
  • Contact

Backup Best Practices – The Grandfather-Father-Son Backup Strategy

June 3, 2019

The Grandfather-Father-Son backup strategy, sometimes just referred to as the GFS backup strategy, is a data retention policy with the aim of making data backup management more manageable and less resource heavy.

You can’t have millions of backup points stored on your backup repository forever. It just wouldn’t be feasible and would take up a lot of resources.

The GFS backup strategy lets you keep a full backup of a machine for the year, whilst reducing the storage space required to a minimum.

How does it work?

This strategy contains several tiers of backup.

  • The Grandfather – A full machine backup, performed less often than father or son backups. This provides a snapshot of the machine and is usually stored offsite.
  • The Father – This is a full backup of the machine too, but backed up more often to a local device for faster access.
  • The Son – The regular incremental backup. This is usually daily, but could be running as regularly as minutes to bring down the RPO. An incremental backup only adds more data when comparing the changes to files in the Father backup.

This can also be extended to Great-Grandfather for a yearly backup, but usually this is overkill, although it could be useful to have a snapshot at a certain point in a year, for instance, if you have been infected with malware and the source is traced back a long way.

Here is an example of what a Grandfather-Father-Son backup strategy might look like in a regular month, with the grandfather as a monthly backup, the father as weekly and the son as daily backups.

Monthly Backup Cycle

Weekly Backup Cycle

Here you can see that the full weekly backup is on the Sunday, starting a backup recovery point. Every day an incremental backup runs, adding another recovery point and another link in the backup chain for the week, giving a total of 7 recovery points. This is the standard amount of recovery points set by an RPO, but if your RPO is even more recent than daily, simply set the incremental backup to run at several points during each day instead.

Create your backup strategy today with Vitanium. Get in touch for a quote!

Filed Under: blog Tagged With: Backup

Footer

EMEA

Vitanium

Europe, Middle East & Africa
phone + 44 (0)345 258 1500
email info@vitanium.com

America & Asia

Vitanium

10 Lanidex Plaza West Ste 213
Parsippany, NJ 07054
phone +1 973 526-2979
hotline +1 973 526-2988
email info@vitanium.com

Asia Pacific

phone +65 6353 0555
hotline +65 6353 7448
email info@vitanium.com

Newsletter Optin

Sign up to our newsletter for the latest in backup and data protection solutions. No spam - we promise!

  • LinkedIn
  • Twitter

Useful links

  • Home
  • Datahive cloud backup
  • Veeam cloud connect backup
  • Veeam Cloud Connect Replication
  • Office 365 Solutions
  • Cloud email filtering
  • Cloud email archiving
  • Pricing
  • Partners
  • About
  • Complaints

Copyright © 2021 · Vitanium Cloud Limited.

This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish. Cookie settingsACCEPT
Privacy & Cookies Policy

Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are as essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may have an effect on your browsing experience.
Necessary
Always Enabled

Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.