Grandfather Father Son backup rotation

Grandfather Father Son backup rotation scheme also know as GFS is based on using three sets or generations of tapes. Monthly full backup is grandfather, weekly full backup is father and a son set for partial everyday backups. Grandfather tapes are stored off-site while “younger” generations stay in backup rotation.

Round Robin

Round Robin is the most simple of backup rotations schemes and allows one week tapes rotation on Friday it is full backup, all other day of a week backups are incremental or differential. This allows to have a base of weekly full backups and to recover information from any day during the week.

Backup rotation

Backup rotation schedule is an essential basis of the whole backup strategy especially concerning corporate data backup and recovery used by enterprises. Top backup rotation schedules used for tape backup are mostly Grandfather-Father-Son (GFS), Round Robin and Tower of Hanoi.