Back up policy

[bushby]

We are currently reviewing our back up policy.

 

we current go back 6 months on disk

 

we are implementing a new system in the summer thus the review.

 

what i would like to know is:

how often do you archive?

how far back does the archive go?

 

Kind Regards,

Bushby

[cpjitservices]

We have our own backup policy here.. We use Windows Backup on the Windows Servers, they backup to a samba share on a local Linux server, our other Linux servers then use Rsync to backup to the Samba share then we have the Samba share backing up to our SAN, at the moment the Rsync script just updates the Backups if changes are made to the files/folders it's set to backup, this way it minimizes the amount of traffic going over the network and gives us more space. The Rsync is done every night to the main SAN as well as the Widnows backups to the Samba share which all gets replicated over to the SAN, once we get another site then the SAN itself will be Rsync'ing to another SAN.

[sonofsanta]

At the moment, and this is liable to change soon when we migrate to virtual servers...

* Daily backup to hard disk, overwritten each week (i.e. we have a Monday disk, a Tuesday disk...)

* Weekly backup to tape taken on Friday, kept for a month (i.e. we have a Friday 1 tape, Friday 2 tape...)

* The last Friday of each month is a monthly backup, kept for a year (i.e. we have a September tape, October tape...)

* The last Friday if July is a yearly backup, kept for 7 years, so that a Year 13 girl could ask us for something she had at the end of Year 7.

 

Oh, and, the most recent backups are taken off-site overnight, in case of disaster. Other stuff is then kept in a fireproof safe in our office.

[JonWPS]

The only tapes I hold for each server are: Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu, Fri 1, Fri 2, Fri 3, Fri 4, Fri 5. All full backups. I tend to take a backup of year 11 leavers' work each summer, but beyond that I'm a bit handicapped by shortage of media for additional sets.

[dave.81]

Out backups have been a mess for so long just ad-hoc to when and how long. I'm just starting to get this on track moving our servers to VMware and using Veeam to backup to disc.

 

We do nightly backups of all servers and keep the previous 14 days, we also do monthly backups which i plan to keep for 12 months.

[gshaw]

We do nightly Veeam backups using reverse incremental mode so always have the latest backup as a full. We then stream that to tape once a week on weekends (recycled every 4 weeks) plus one monthly tape kept for a year.

 

Veeam has 30 days of restore points so we can go back a month for quick disk restores before having to restore from archive.

[DEvans]

I look after a selection of schools and all have different requirements.

 

Generally, if they do what I tell them, I have Dual NAS drives for a "LIVE" backup, seperated at the furthest corners of the school away from the server(s). So I can do quick restoration of data without needing to faff around with tapes. One NAS has a full weekly and a full fortnightly and one is a differential Daily.

 

Then depending on how often I visit the school, we have a tape drive, setup in the exact way as JonWPS (Mon-Thurs & 5 Fridays) with the additional 1 for Holiday Backups.

 

The Tapes are Encypted and kept offsite.

 

I find with backups, the typical cause of failure is when you need to rely on someone to do it. Tapes are a pain unless you pay a fortune for an automatic tape library.

 

Think the most common method of backup procedure is Disk to Disk to Tape, from I can gather from other technicians. People moan about Tapes still, saying its an old technology, but of course see if they say that when their "Super New Techno Solid State Hard Drive" fails and watch their faces as they slowly realise that recovering data from flash drives is next to impossible.

 

As for Software to use. The Windows Backup Role isn't all that bad, but not ideal for Tapes, as they simply don't work with it.

 

We use Backup Exec 2010R3 but only because it comes for cheap with a new server, its up to £400 otherwise and thats just for the basic edition. If you have exchange and other enterprise applications, you need addons. Also multiple DC licenses etc. It gets costly.

 

Macrium Reflect is a good image backup solution, as you take a full blown snap shot of your servers and if they were to die you can do a "bare metal" like restoration. (You need to pay extra for features like that with Symantec). Macrium is cheaper but does not support Tape drives, unless your tapes can be mapped to a drive letter.

 

You do however NEED to have an offsite backup. Think of the most unlikely event and plan for it. Floods don't tend to care if you have a single building school or a school split into many seperate buildings.

 

Fire is the main one, as this the the most likely of unlikely events to occur.

 

I believe in all our Backup Policies we mention general data protection jibberish. RAID, Shadow Copy, DFS Replication etc.. Just to keep everyone more assured their data is safe. Can even mention Anti-virus and references to any other policies you probably have in place.

Edited March 21, 2012 by DEvans
My Spelling Sucks..

[sted]

does using volume shadow copy count as a backup (granted not as an only backup but for the whoops i deleted my file its quite effective)

[5tu]

We do nightly Veeam backups using reverse incremental mode so always have the latest backup as a full. We then stream that to tape once a week on weekends (recycled every 4 weeks) plus one monthly tape kept for a year.

 

Veeam has 30 days of restore points so we can go back a month for quick disk restores before having to restore from archive.

 

What do you use for duplicating Veeam backups to tape? I'm just evaluating Veeam at the moment but I thought it was disk backup only?

[kism3t]

Our Backup Policy is:

 

We use Backup Exec

 

Students and Staff full backup Friday every week to a NAS

Differential backups Mon-Thurs to NAS

I then transfer the last full backup to tape at the end of the month and this is kept in the safe for a year

We also have Weekly SIMS full backups, Daily Diff and some random weekly resources that are also archived every month on tape

[Bezwick]

We have a backup server in a remote building with 6 2TB Sata hdds (RAID 5) that is replicated to by DFS, it then takes shadow copies once a day. This is our daily backup, monthly we take a tape backup of all the users homespaces (including shadow copies) and take the tapes off site. Once a year we buy a usb hdd and take a complete copy of everyones homespaces and put them in the school safe. Also every saturday our backup server takes a copy of the key virtual machines. It all seams to work well for us and didnt cost that much to setup.

[gshaw]

What do you use for duplicating Veeam backups to tape? I'm just evaluating Veeam at the moment but I thought it was disk backup only?

 

Backup Exec, just takes a mask of *.vbk in the root folder where our jobs are stored... could do the same with Windows Backup as well.

 

If you use a different job mode there are scripts that can fire off stream-to-tape jobs after the Veeam backup completes (see their support forum)