Proper backup procedure

[Steve_Pasq]

I have had some trouble recently figuring out what tapes certain files are on when trying to do a restore and it has left me wondering if my backup procedure is correct or if I have been doing it all wrong for months. Here is what I do. I have B2D folders set up for all of my type of jobs. Throughout the week all of my data is backed up to the B2D folders. then at the end of the week those B2D folders are backed up to tape and the tapes are sent off site. When the data on the B2Ds exceeded their overwrite protection period they are purged off disk to make room for new backups. Now, my question is how do I know what files are on what tapes when I need to restore something that is off site. I never know what tape to request back. As a test I put a tape that I had just received back from off site storage into my tape drive and tried to do a restore jsut to browse the tape to see what was on it. I was never able to do it. First I inventoried the tape then ran a catalog. I would then right click the tape and select restore data. BE would then tell me I need to catalog the tape eventhough I already did that. Do you only catalog when you need to do a restore of should you catalog all tapes and B2Ds after backups are run? I am affraid that is I ever needed to restore something from off site storage I would not be able to do so. Is my backup method optimal? Instead of backing up my B2Ds at the end of the week to tape should I leave those just on disk and run complete backups from the source servers straight to tape instead? Any thoughts or input would be appreciated.  Thanks.

[Ken_Putnam]

Rather than do a standard backup of the B2D folders, run DUPLICATE jobs instead, this way BackupExec has a catalog entry for the tape and the data on it, and you can also restore directly from tape

You can use Policies to start the DUPLICATE jobs as soon as the B2D jobs are complete, to automat the process

[Steve_Pasq]

Thanks for the reply. I have never used policies before in BE. I will check this out. If you know of any good documentation on how to properly do this it would be appreciated. Thanks.

[Steve_Pasq]

I am looking at the admin guide for BE and see how to create policies and templates. When creating a new policy I get to the point where I have to create a new template. When I click New Template the selection for Duplicate Backup Sets Template is greyed out. How can I create a new policy and be able to select this template option?

[Ken_Putnam]

See page 444

Adding a duplicate backup template to a policy