Acronis Backup for Linux Server - User Guide - Manual (Page 43)

43 Copyright © Acronis International GmbH, 2002-2014
Note: When the Incremental backup type is selected along with retention rules, the archive will be
cleaned up using consolidation (p. 202), which is a more time-consuming and resource-intensive
operation.
4.2.6.2 Grandfather-Father-Son scheme
At a glance

Daily ("Son"), weekly ("Father"), and monthly ("Grandfather") backups

Custom day for weekly and monthly backups

Custom retention periods for backups of each type
Description
Let us suppose that we want to set up a backup plan that will regularly produce a series of daily (D),
weekly (W), and monthly (M) backups. Here is a natural way to do this: the following table shows a
sample two-month period for such a plan.
Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa Su
Jan 1—Jan 7
D D D D W - -
Jan 8—Jan 14
D D D D W - -
Jan 15—Jan 21
D D D D W - -
Jan 22—Jan 28
D D D D M - -
Jan 29—Feb 4
D D D D W - -
Feb 5—Feb 11
D D D D W - -
Feb 12—Feb 18
D D D D W - -
Feb 19—Feb 25
D D D D M - -
Feb 26—Mar 4
D D D D W - -
Daily backups run every workday except Friday, which is left for weekly and monthly backups.
Monthly backups run on the last Friday of each month, and weekly backups run on all other Fridays.
As a result, you will normally obtain 12 monthly backups over a full year.
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 of the week when a backup will be performed. The default value is
Workdays.
Weekly/Monthly Specifies which day of the week (out of the days selected in the Back up on field) you
want to reserve for weekly and monthly backups.
The default value is Friday. With this value, a monthly backup will run on the last
Friday of each month. Weekly backups will run on all other Fridays. If you choose a
different day of week, these rules will apply to the day chosen.