Backup Strategy

[technical1]

Hi,
Ive installed BrightStor ARCServe 11 recently and have created a backup job that backs my IIS webfolders.
I do a full backup of my webfolders on Sunday & Wednesday.
Incremental backups on the other days.

In terms of Disaster recovery(os, system state etc), how often would i backup the complete server? Is once every 2 weeks acceptable?

 

[Russell5]

technical1, how often you should backup your server for disaster recovery is very subjective. There are several factors involved, such as:

- How critical is the system to your day to day operations?
- How limited are you in terms of backup space (whether you are backing up to tape or disk)?
- Does the backup process impact the system?
- Is the data fairly static or does a lot of data change on a daily basis?

If the system is very critical and you have plenty of space left on the tapes, you might want to do a full backup every night. We do a full backup of OS, Registry, and System State on almost every one of our servers (100+) every night.

On the other hand, if its not a critical system and data doesn't change that much, then doing a full backup on Monday with Differential backups Tuesday through Thursday might be perfectly fine.