Choosing a backup scheme

When creating a backup policy/plan with a tape library destination, the following backup schemes are available: Back up now, Back up later, Grandfather-Father-Son, Tower of Hanoi, or Custom. The Simple backup scheme is disabled, because backup consolidation is impossible for archives located on tapes.

Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 provides automation of tape rotation for Grandfather-Father-Son, Tower of Hanoi, and Custom backup schemes.

Grandfather-Father-Son (GFS) and Tower of Hanoi (ToH) are the most popular backup schemes to use on tape library devices. These schemes are optimized to maintain the best balance between a backup archive size, the number of recovery points available from the archive, and the quantity of required tapes for archiving.

If your backup archive must provide recovery with daily resolution for the last several days, weekly resolution for the last several weeks and monthly resolution for any time in the past, the most preferred scheme for you is the Grandfather-Father-Son scheme.

If the main goal is to provide data protection for the longest period with the minimal number of used tapes permanently loaded into a small tape library (e.g. autoloader), the best solution is to probably choose the Tower of Hanoi scheme.

The Custom backup scheme enables you to specify a backup schedule and retention rules to define a desired tape rotation. Use this scheme, when the Grandfather-Father-Son and the Tower of Hanoi schemes’ usage is not enough. For example, if the full size of protected data is considerably less than the size of a tape, the best choice is to use the Custom backup scheme with regular daily/weekly/monthly full backups, some simple retention rules, and tape options by default.

Choosing a backup scheme