Trouble creating a backup plan...

[jeffbrown]

I'm using a dual drive High Rely SATA storage device for my backups. http://www.high-rely.com/HR3/includes/SATABackup.php

The device shows up as two attached hard drives.

I have purchased 10 drives--2 for each work day. I'm backing up about 1.2 TB. I want to perform full backups on a daily basis. Whenever I put the specific daily drives in the unit, I want all the media overwritten. So, when I put in Monday's drives, it will overrite the previous Monday's backups. Should I create my specific jobs then schedule them on a daily basis? Do I create a separate media set for each day? I'm confused. Thanks for your help!

Message Edited by jeffbrown on 01-23-2009 06:01 PM

[MAHESHN · Accepted solution]

1 media set should be fine, just ensure that your overwriote protection is lset appropriate

Lets assume daily bacup Mnday to friday - 1 tape for each day

And every mondays tape gets overwrittent by next mondays job

I would create a M<edai set with OPP: 5 days and APP: 1 day = 6 days in total , so on the start of 7th day the tape becomes overwritable

[jeffbrown]

That's what I thought I would do--it just seemed to simple. I was expecting it to be more complex. Thanks for your help!

[jeffbrown]

After doing some thinking, I decided to redo my plan.

Now, I want to perform a full backup every Friday for four weeks (1 month), then after the 4th Friday, start using the 1st Friday drives again. During the week, I want to perform differential backups daily--but I only want to keep those for the current week. I'll reuse the same drives from week-to-week. Would I create 2 media sets: one for differential and one for weekly full backups? The weekly full media set would be overwriteable for 4 weeks and appendable for 1 day. I'm confused how I would account for the differential though. And for jobs--would I create 2 jobs--one for weekly full and one for daily differential?  

[Hywel_Mallett]

I would create two media sets (fulls and diffs).

I would make the Fulls Overwrite protected for 3 weeks (4 weeks will not allow them to be overwritten until ALL data on the tape is 4 weeks old), and append for 1 day.

For the Diffs, I'd set an append period of 1 day, and an Overwrite Protection Period of 5 days.

For the jobs, I'd use a policy (just for neatness), so create a new policy, and add a template which does a full backup, targets the Fulls media set, and runs every Friday. Add a second template wich does differential backups, targets the Diffs media set, and runs on the other days. Because your Job Run days won't clash, you don't need any rules. Then apply the policy to your backup selection list.

[jeffbrown]

Thanks for the help. The first differential seemed to work just fine last night. I guess I'll find out how the rest go. Thansk!