Snapshot Rentention - confused

[Tripz]

Looking to clarify how the snapshot rentention policy work.

I'm essentially running CPS as follows:

1.) Nightly backup of Business Server at 10:00pm each evening

2.) Snapshot at 11:59pm

3.) Streamed to tape at 1:00am through Backup Exec

So I'm only snapshotting once a day.

Snapshots are retained as follows:

One Daily for 7 days

One weekly for 5 weeks

One monthly for 12 months

Does this mean that after 12 months I could go back to the state of data as at January, February, March, April and so on?

To be absolutely sure, that I'm on the right track, this would mean after a full years operation I'd have the following at any one time:

7 Daily snapshots

5 Weekly Snapshots

12 Monthly Snapshots

For a total of 24 snapshots.

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Another couple of questions.

If I delete a file from the Business Server, is it actually removed from the physical structure of files in the backup destination when the backup runs, meaning it is hidden in the background as a snapshot file?

If I ask backup exec to backup the "protected resources" that contains the backup destination - is it backing up just the state of the data as at that point in time (as it existed on the Business server when the last backup ran) or is it including all the snapshots and changed data as well?

[Dave_Woo]

if you are utilising VSS your snapshotes will be as follows:

1 snapshot for each drive of every server you are CPS'ing during backup operations

             i.e 5 server with 3 drives means you will get 15 snapshots per day

1 snapshot for each drive on the backup exec server

            i.e 2 drives on the server you will get 2 snapshots stored.

this effectively means you have stored 17 snapshots in 1 day, in 3 days your older snapshots are being deleted, this is because there is a Microsoft limitation where a maximum of 64 snapshots can be stored on a 2003 Server. So your Snapshot retention policy will appear not to work, if you have a look at the CPS logs you will see that they have been deleted by a 3rd party- meaning Microsoft

Backup Exect is backing up the state of the data when the last snapshot was taken when backing up through protected resources. In order to restore a CPS protected server you will be required to rebuild the server to a base level including OS service packs, and restore the data to them, if you want a system state backup, my recommendation would be to do a separate system statebackup on those business critical machines