Hello all,
I'm re-evaluating how we do our backups as the current method is manually configured and a bit awkward.
What we currently do is the following:
- Mon-Fri Week 1 Data - Full backup to disk, and that backup to tape the next day
- Mon-Fri Week 2 Data - Full backup to disk, and that backup to tape the next day
- Mon Fri Week 1 Exchange Brick Level - Full backup to disk, and that backup to the same tape as data the next day
- Mon Fri Week 2 Exchange Brick Level - Full backup to disk, and that backup to the same tape as data the next day
- Saturday Week 1-5 Full Backup to disk of Data and Exchange Brick Level, and they both go to tape hte next day.
So we can restore from disk anytime up to the last 10 weekdays and the last 5 saturdays. The aim is to restore from disk primarily and have the tapes as a failsafe and for offsite backups. This is company policy and cannot change. At the moment each day has it's own tape in the autoloader. The Saturday tape is kept offsite.
At the moment each one of these jobs is configured manually - we have a lot of backup jobs. I'd like to simplify all of this and replace everything with media policies, templates and policies.
Is there any way to acheive any of the following:
- Create a backup job/set/policy that uses Week 1 media for 5 backups and then Week 2 media for 5 backups, alternating each week?
- Create two backup jobs/sets/policies, one that runs for 5 days and then waits a week before running again while the other job/set/policy runs?
- Create a duplicate backup sets template that will copy to tape each weekday the latest synthetic backup, any incremental/differential backups that have run, and the Exchange Brick level backup to disk? (I'm guessing overwrite with the first job, append the remaining and eject the tape after Exchange?)
- If i put 10 tapes/media in a media set and set a job to run mon-fri using that media set, will i get two weeks worth of backups in rotation?
I'm thinking that i should be able to have a policy that does the following:
Template 1 - backup data mon-fri in a two week rotation (incremental)
Template 2 - synthetic backup of data on saturday
Template 3 - synthetic backup of data monthly
Template 4 - backup Exchange Brick Level mon-fri in a two week rotation (incremental)
Template 5 - synthetic backup of exchange on saturday
Template 6 - synthetic backup of exchange monthly
Template 7 - daily backup to tape of Template 1, 2, 4, 5
Template 8 - daily backup to tape of 2, 5
Template 9 - eject 8 for offsite backup
Template 7 is assuming the following is correct - if i do synthetic backup on the weekend and incrementals mon-fri, on a wednesday backup tape should have the weekend synthetic backup to disk, plus the backup to disk incrementals for monday, tuesday and wednesday.
If it all becomes too hard to keep all of the backup to disk backups for two weeks then I'm going to have to have a chat to management about the cost of disk space, management overhead etc. and we can restore from tape.
Any ideas would be most welcome!
Thanks
Ash.
