Grandfather-Father-Son Backup
Encyclopedia : G : GR : GRA : Grandfather-Father-Son Backup
Grandfather-Father-Son Backup refers to the most common rotation scheme for rotating backup media. Originally designed for tape back up, it works well for any hierarchical backup strategy. The basic method is to define three sets of backups, such as daily, weekly and monthly. The daily or Son backups are rotated on a daily basis with one graduating to Father status each week. The weekly or Father backups are rotated on a weekly basis with one graduating to Grandfather status each month. Often one or more of the graduated backups is removed from the site for safekeeping and disaster recovery purposes.
A disadvantage of this backup scheme is that it doesn't ensure that media is replaced before it wears out. For example, each daily (son) media is used every week until it fails, unless some method of tracking media age is implemented.
See also
- Backup
- Backup rotation scheme
- Backup systems and recovery
- Tower of Hanoi
- Continuous Data Protection
From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.