Since you are a captive customer, you may have less negotiation power. But try going for something based on the 90 day moving average of the daily change rate (add up how much has been actually backed up over the last 90 days, and pay on the average), plus a smaller rate on the number of bytes stored on tape.
Another option, take the amount of data you are paying to back up each day, and put the numbers in a spread sheet and do some data analysis on different scenarios and pricing models. Talk with IT to know EXACTLY what they are charging you for, in all the gory detail. I have been on both sides, and sometimes the bean counters go wild. When in IT, backups tend to pay for other things that are happening. Sometimes backup costs have been hidden by being rolled into the cost of disk storage, or into the CPU costs (in the old mainframe days), etc. IT appears to be brain dead most places, but they really aren't (most of the time). They are usually trying to figure out how to make a budget come out near actual expenses. Running computer centers is a high $$ item at best. ... Also IT is usually the 'step child' group. As any group that is not in the 'business of the business', is overhead. Reducing overhead is always a good deal until it is reduced to the point it can't provide not just needed but required services. (Sorry, my old IT blinders came down for a minute.) It looks like something like IBMs TSM might be better in your case, but you are stuck with what IT provides. .. Good Luck. Elizabeth Schwartz wrote: > Fixed-in-stone parameters: > > 1) We outsource backup to central IT. > 2) We are charged by the gigabyte, per backup run > 3) The backup provider uses Legato > 4) We would like to minimize backup cost. > 5) Our data tends to be large and "clumpy" - in some random 1-to-4-day > period, someone will write 10 gigs of data which will then sit there > for months unchanged. > 6) The data is on a very very reliable SAN so full restores are > unlikely . We are willing to risk slow restores > 7) We do individual file restores occasionally. No more than once a month > max. > > > The current backup strategy, which we didn't design and *** initially > were unable to negotiate changes in *** is to do a full every 59 days, > then a weekly rotation of 7,6,4,5,3,2,1 (which is the same as doing > 2,2,2,2,2,2,1 , I know). This strategy minimizes tapes needed to do a > full restore, but for data like ours it tends to maximize *cost*. > It's time to negotiate a change. > > The obvious thing would be to go to full every 59 days and a > 1,2,3,4,5,6,7 rotation, but I'm thinking we should get a little > creative. If we do a full on Sunday and someone dumps 10G on Monday, > that 10G will get backed up eight times. I'm thinking the first week > should start with a 1, second with a 2, third with a 3, etc ... > (Legato has 9 levels, I believe...?) > > any thoughts, suggestions, clue bonks? > > > > > _______________________________________________ Tech mailing list [email protected] http://lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tech This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators http://lopsa.org/
