How to implement grandfather-father-son scheme

You will not know how much space you need until you see the incremental daily's. and even that can change.
for 3 generations of full you will already need 500GB x3, plus all the incrementals.

I would start creating jobs and seeing how long the full and incrementals take, and actual sizes.

I hope this helps !

Hi Sys,

Can you tell me how to setup the jobs to be the GFS scheme in backup exec? Is there a place I can download templates? How many devices do I need? How to graduate backups from one status to another. With tape its easier to understand then harddrives.

Thanks

That deepnds how many generations you actually want to store on the drives.

You need a job for each day, of all generations you want to keep.

If you only want one week, you can set up 5 Incrementals, and a full.
If you want 2 weeks, you can either set up 2 weeks worth or simply after the first week is done, rename the existing directories, and create fresh ones for the coming week.  It depends on how much manual internvention you want.

I hope this helps !

Sys,
I actually want zero manual internvention. I have the space and would like to go back at least 30 days on all backups. Does that mean I need 30 devices? I am looking for steps and terminology that backup exec uses to build this scheme. What I want done automaticly is for each night to have an incremental and friday have the weekly full. The weekly full should move to be the monthly and so on. How can I build this into backup exec?  

If you want no manual for 30 days, then I think you will need that many jobs.

where can i download templates to build policies and jobs?

Not sure that you can. There should be samples in the documentation, adn possibly on the Symantec site.

Sys,

Can you give me some instructions on how I would back up a network drive in this scheme? How many devices do I need? How should the jobs be setup, full, incremental, ect. Should the jobs be override or append and so on. This way I can follow this example for the rest of the drives. How does a folder graduate from grandfather to father? Do I manually move data? I am looking for some more details on the topic....

Thanks

Again, I would review the documentation, which is pretty  good if you actually take the time to read it.

I would create a job for every day of a 30 day ( or at least 28 day ) cycle, Full on weekends, and incremental or differential daily on weekdays.

No appending.

I would start testing immediately and if at all possible set up  a Lab where you can do  backup and restore on non production equipement.
Disaster recovery is no good unless you know how to recover quickly and efficeintly.