Will this setup work?

[JHeaton]

OS: Server 2K8 R2

NBU:  7.0

Capacity based licensing

I think I may have this figured out... but maybe not, lol.

What I want to accomplish:

1)  Incremental backups - Monday - Thursday.  Destination - Disk (AdvancedDisk)  -  Retention: 1 week

2)  Full backup - Friday.  Destination - Disk (AdvancedDisk)  -  Retention:  1 week

3)  Sometime over the weekend - copy the full backup from disk to tape.

4)  Export the tapes to an offsite location - Retention:  42 days

How I think I can accomplish this:

1)  Normal backup policy, setting incremental and full start days/times/retentions

2)  Configure Vault to grab the full backup and copy it to tape, and do the tape export.

I know there was discussion of using SLP in the mix, but from what I was reading in the Vault Admin Guide, I don't think that's absolutely necessary.  Please correct me if I'm wrong in that thought.

Anyone see any gotchas that I've missed?  Any other way that's more prescribed?

Thanks,

Joe

[Nathan_B]

The one thing I see is, if you have the full on disk have a retention of only 1 week and something happened to your tape drive, you run the risk of it expiring before you notice/fix it (not saying you wouldn't notice, just saying the possibility exists).  You could have vault do the duplication over the weekend, then set vault to delete the images on disk after some specified period of time, leaving you with the copy on tape.

[JHeaton]

But other than that one retention, it looks good?

I'm brand new here, so just want some verification.

[RiaanBadenhorst]

Hi,

You need to run a 2 week retention on the Full. If you don't, your incrementals become (potentially) useless as soon as then next full is run (orphaned incrementals).

[maj_rif]

Hi,

I'll suggest you not to put all your backups on disk. better to list all server along with your application and database, define your RPO and RTO and then decide about backup. 

e.g. you can schedule exchange backup on disk  and file server backup to tape. 

NetBackup also offers data classification option. you can also consider those options that will automate the procedure to save data on disk and duplicate it to tape.

again that is really wide debate and every one will suggest on the basis of their experience. Better to define RPO and RTO of your applications and databases, the best thing is you are using capacity base licensing and can use all available options of NetBackup.

[maj_rif]

 igore this post

[Twinkle_Sapra]

Better to use Storage Life Cycle with one of two option according to your requirement.

Stage Capacity Managed.

Expire after Duplicaiton.

[JHeaton]

I extended the retention to 2 weeks.  Thanks :)

[JHeaton]

I'm not sure why you would say that having a copy of the backup on disk is a bad thing.  Much faster to restore from disk than to track down a tape and recover from there.

We're using a DAS, with near line SAS drives, so it's not expensive SAN storage, or anything, either...

[RiaanBadenhorst]

Hi,

There is nothing wrong with keeping all or some backups on disk. These days with deduplication you could probably keep it all on disk. It all comes down to your organizations strategy and the need to have copies of backups off-site (which you traditionally achieved with tape, but these days with replication built into some disk devices its also possible without tape.)

Disk was also originally positioned as a temporary storage area for backing up slow or small backup sets i.e. LAN Clients that push data at suboptimal speeds, or database log backups that are typically small in size. The combination of the slow transfer speed and small backup sets tended to lower the life of (specifically) LTO drives as they had to stop/start a lot when doing the backups. Staging the backups and then pushing them to tape ensured that the drives were spinning at better speeds and for longer periods.

Currently disk is deemed cheaper (and more reliable) than tape so its becaming a more frequently adopted option. However you have to way up your options taking into account the cost of the disk you use, the bandwidth cost to replicate, the cost of a DR site + online devices used with replication, and finally what tape would cost.

There is no right or wrong way to do it, there are just a lot of options.