Here's what I'm thinking for a Disk-to-Disk-to-[off-site]Disk plan; I'm looking for a critique and have some questions:
4 servers:
DC, File and Print, Exchange and ERP/SQL
-Windows Agents on all servers
Backup Exec Media server: BE 11D with a 1TB array for the B2D folder
My plan:
1) Weekly Fulls on all servers to the BE Media Server
2) Daily Incrementals to the BE Media Server that have a 45-day "life" before they get overwritten
1 and 2 make up the D2D part.
Now for the off-site "2D" part:
3) After each Weekly Full, I then Duplicate this set to a USB hard drive with Encryption
3a) if possible, I'd like to dupe all the daily incrementals over to the USB drive too [Is this possible???] (also with encryption)
4) the USB hard drive gets bubble-wrapped and goes off-site for a 5 week hiatus before coming back into the rotation (there will be 6 weekly USB drives)
5) On the last Friday of each month a new USB drive is inserted and steps 3, 3a and 4 are done. But this is a monthly archive and this USB drive stays off-site forever
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Questions:
1) With the monthly archive containing 1 weekly and 45 days of incrementals, does this mean that I can recover any file existing at the end of any day?
2) I have heard of problems using USB drives "like tapes" like I'm planning to do with the duplicate jobs. Will doing a quick format of the USB drive to wipe it and creating another B2D folder on it be sufficient to overcome the problems? If so, can this be scripted?
3) Will I have a problem restoring from the duplicate sets on any of the USB hard drives? I don't have to go through a slow catalog process before a restore will I?
4) What are others' experiences with D2D2D? For some reason, I don't see a Symantec "Best Practices for D2D2D" article. Is D2D2D not a good way to go?