SharePoint Backup and Off Site Tape Storage

[Denda]

Good Afternoon Everyone -

Just double checking on something.  I know Netbackup states that the SharePoint backups must be backed up to disk for a successful backup/restore procedure however I am wondering what people are doing for their off site storage processes?

Could I back the data up to tape, then restore the data to a disk, then restore the data to SharePoint from the disk?  Has anyone tried this previously? Would there be issues with me encrypting and compressing the SharePoint data to tape (corporate policy for all offsite data) when I am restoring back to disk?  Just thought I would ask before I start playing around with the setup. 

Thanks for all of your help.

[Gerald_W__Gitau]

Backing up to disk is to enable granular restores, otherwise you don't have to backup to disk. You can do normal backup to tapes but no document level recovery option.

[Mouse]

However, recovery will be manual procedure.

You will need to find corresponding backup image and duplicate it to disk either from GUI or from the CLI

If you aren't using GRT, you can backup/recovery directly to and from tape, without any problems.

[Denda]

Thanks for your input.  We are using granular restores, so at least I know that in case of the worst, it can be done, just with a little elbow grease!  Thank you both again for your help.