Rotation help

[sstabb]

Can someone explain to me how to setup the rotation for 1 year
M-Thurs Diff / daily (4 tapes)
Friday Full / Weekly (5 Tapes)
Last friday of month / Monthly (12 tapes)

The last friday of the month seems to be the issue, I am open of suggestions.

Thanks in advance

 

[SLMHC]

We do something similar here in our shop.

Mon-Thurs - Full x4
Fri-Sun - Full x1
1st Tuesday of Each Month x3

So on the 1st Tuesday we sub in the Monthly tape (as we cannot do our backup during the day, its way too large and swamps our network - we have a remote site that we backup) for the regular tuesday tape.

I chose Tuesday as the monthly backup because someone will always be at work to change the tape. It is rare that a Tuesday would be a Stat holliday.

We only save data for 3 months in this situation, but could easily add 9 more tapes to get a year of backups.

If we had an autoloader we could do monthly/yearly backups when ever we wanted.

 

[alyster4k]

We do full backups (for now) every weeknight. That makes 3 regular tapes that we use every week. Then we factor in Monday tapes that go to our local vault (5 tapes for the 5 possible Monday's in a month). Finally, our Thursday tapes go off site in the same fashion as our Monday ones. All this for a total of 13 tapes for a month for one server.

Downsides -- this is tough to remember which one every night without a human error every once in a while. Also, the oldest tape isn't that old. We need to factor in a month/yearly set too.

Anyways, that is my 2 cents.

 

[Zelandakh]

They look very complicated!

Mine may be equally complex, but I find it works:

Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
All full backups, overwritten every week.

Friday - Week 1
up to
Friday - Week 13
Weeks 1 to 12 are overwritten each quarter when they get reused. Week 13 is brand new every time and never gets overwritten.

17 jobs, easy to remember and allows restoration each night for a week, each week for a quarter and each quarter going back for wuite a while...

<signature for rent>

 

[sstabb]

I understand the concepts now. I am required to be able to restore from monthly backups for a year. This should not be that hard and is all automatic with ArcServe. This is what I am thinking now.
M-Thurs (Daily) Diff (4 tapes)
Friday (Weekly) Full (5 tapes min)
Last day of the Month (12 tapes min)

Now, I assume that I will have to setup Daily, Weekly and Monthly Jobs and Media sets with the proper overwrite protection periods. (I think I understand that much.) Now the question is how do I tell what media to use next. Is there a weekly or daily report that I can run that tells what media to use?

Thanks for all the ideas
Scott

 

[SLMHC]

We do not take our tapes off site as of now. Our server room is just off our IS office with access only through our locked door and the server room locked door. We also keep the tapes in a locked fire resistant safe. This setup has been deemed satisfactory by our CEO.