OK I am over cautious, and we have a small data store in comparison to many on the list. I am just in the process of converting old backup tapes. Our normal backup procedure is Monthly tapes, one for each month, for our offsite backup. Onsite we use smaller tapes and do a weekly backup. Again these tapes are kept for 12 months and 52 weeks respectively. However we also do a Fiscal Year Backup and a Calendar Year Backup. These tapes are kept as long as possible. I started with DDS Tapes and progressed through DDS3 tapes, we then switched to VXA tapes. I took all the DDS tapes I could read, wrote them back to disk then back to VXA Tapes. We are in the process of switching to LTO for our platform, so I have just read in all the VXA tapes from Year End and FY End backups, wrote them back to disk. I will shortly spin them off to LTO tapes. However in about 6 months I will have to pull them back off this tape and write it again as we are again changing backup software. I have gone through 4 different backup programs over the life of this project and many tapes. I do have backups of Year end and Fiscal Year end back to 1995. There are a couple of incomplete backups in there as the old DDS tapes just couldn't be read.
And yes I have been asked to pull data off the old backups and look at it. We had an error a few years ago that needed to be researched as to when it started and whose fault it was. Being a Govt agency we had to research it and pull any information we could. We were able to pull all needed data from our backups and prove error was not ours, even though we were blamed. The other agency giving us the data could only go back 12-24 months to supply data. But again I am lucky that we have a small data store so far. ________________________________ From: David Mazzaccaro [[email protected]] Sent: Friday, June 03, 2011 8:12 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Tape backup policies Hello everyone. For those who are still backing up to tape… What do you guys have for tape backup policies? I’m curious as to how far back you are keeping tapes – 1 year? 5 years? I’ve typically seen a 10 tape rotation w/ a monthly tape put in offsite storage. Is this still common practice? . ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ --- To manage subscriptions click here: http://lyris.sunbelt-software.com/read/my_forums/ or send an email to [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> with the body: unsubscribe ntsysadmin ________________________________ CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE: This e-mail and any attachments are confidential. If you are not the intended recipient, you do not have permission to disclose, copy, distribute, or open any attachments. If you have received this e-mail in error, please notify us immediately by returning it to the sender and delete this copy from your system. ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ --- To manage subscriptions click here: http://lyris.sunbelt-software.com/read/my_forums/ or send an email to [email protected] with the body: unsubscribe ntsysadmin
