Backup Central

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Hello,
I am in the process of re-evaluating our companies backup retention
policies. I wanted to get feedback from others who use Netbackup as to
what they use in their own environments. What I need to know is how
frequently you backup certain files and how long do you keep them before
expiring those backups? We have mixture of applications and platforms
here so any insight to what your setup is would be great. In particular
SQL, ORACLE, EXCHANGE, Financial Applications, user data, Peoplesoft
applications, Windows servers, Unix servers etc.
Thanks in advance,
Greg



The information contained in this e-mail transmission is privileged and=
/or confidential intended solely for the exclusive use of the individual ad=
dressee. If you are not the intended addressee you are hereby notified that=
any retention, disclosure or other use is strictly prohibited. If you have=
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and delete the material.

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This is such a hard question to answer.

I do think there are some generalized best practices when it comes to
retention policies. We've done some research here and found that a good
number of companies don't keep data for longer than 3 months (this does NOT
apply to archives). You'll need to take this information (maybe research a
little on your own) and really apply it to your own environment, weighing
factors like legal requirements, cost of tape for longer retention. This
will help you make a case for reasonable retention levels because if you
leave it up to the business units they'll say keep the data forever, which
is obviously not an option.





-----Original Message-----
From: veritas-bu-admin < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
[mailto:veritas-bu-admin < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu] On Behalf Of Hindle, Greg
Sent: Tuesday, January 11, 2005 9:30 AM
To: veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
Subject: [Veritas-bu] Backup retention Standards?



Hello,
I am in the process of re-evaluating our companies backup retention
policies. I wanted to get feedback from others who use Netbackup as to what
they use in their own environments. What I need to know is how frequently
you backup certain files and how long do you keep them before expiring those
backups? We have mixture of applications and platforms here so any insight
to what your setup is would be great. In particular SQL, ORACLE, EXCHANGE,
Financial Applications, user data, Peoplesoft applications, Windows servers,
Unix servers etc.

Thanks in advance,
Greg




The information contained in this e-mail transmission is privileged
and/or confidential intended solely for the exclusive use of the individual
addressee. If you are not the intended addressee you are hereby notified
that any retention, disclosure or other use is strictly prohibited. If you
have received this notification in error, please immediately contact the
sender and delete the material.

Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

I would say 90% of all of our restore requests occur within two weeks, =
and another 5% within one month. =20
Legal requirements and govt. regulations dictate our retention policies =
that are greater than 1 month, i.e. 3years, 7 years or infinite.
=20
Every once in a while you do get the occasional request for something =
that falls inbetween a year end long term archive and a one month =
standard retention. Usually those are one off requests for a small set =
of personal files that someone accidently nuked.
=20
=20

Hindle, Greg wrote:

Hello,
I am in the process of re-evaluating our companies backup retention
policies. I wanted to get feedback from others who use Netbackup as to
what they use in their own environments. What I need to know is how
frequently you backup certain files and how long do you keep them
before expiring those backups? We have mixture of applications and
platforms here so any insight to what your setup is would be great. In
particular SQL, ORACLE, EXCHANGE, Financial Applications, user data,
Peoplesoft applications, Windows servers, Unix servers etc.

Thanks in advance,
Greg




The information contained in this e-mail transmission is
privileged and/or confidential intended solely for the exclusive use
of the individual addressee. If you are not the intended addressee you
are hereby notified that any retention, disclosure or other use is
strictly prohibited. If you have received this notification in error,
please immediately contact the sender and delete the material.

I have various customers and sometimes the requirements differ but i try
and keep a best practice. I mostly deal with solaris so will explain
what i do

I have a policy for OS files, one for application and one for databases
which each contain the same schedule information but different file and
client lists for the application and database policies.

I keep cumulative incremental backups for 1 week and normally leave
those tapes in the jukebox unless they get full ( monitored via a script )
Weekly full backups are removed and stored in a fireproof safe and
retained for 4 weeks in netbackup
Monthly full backups run every 4 weeks and expire in 3 months. Again
removed after running
Quarterly backups are run every 3 months and kept for 1 year. Again
removed after running
Yearly backups are run every year and retained for 5 years. Again
removed after running.

This may be excessive but seems to work quite well.

In addition to above i do the following

Have a log_archive policy which is a user_archive and i run a cron job
on each machine to find log locations of type file only and issue a
bparchive withe the list. These i keep for 7 years or infinity depending
on setup. The logs are archived and so removed after use.

I also have a DR ( disaster recovery ) policy which various from
customer to customer. The latest one i have done is an InlineTapeCopy of
the each schedule. I have this taken offsite daily as its written to a
different tape pool. I retain these for 2 weeks before they return to
site and into the scratch pool.

hope this helps
Thanks

Our company also backs up the same type of data:
Exchange email backups are only held for 30days for legal reasons unknown to
myself.

SQL, on NT, Lawson / HP UNIX / Oracle on HP

All others go like this:

Exchange = 30 days

NT-Daily = 30 days
NT-Weekly = 3 Months
NT-Monthly = 1 year
NT-Yearly = 7 years or Infinity

HP-Daily = 30 days
HP-Weekly = 3 Months
HP-Monthly = 1 year
HP-Yearly = Inifinity 30 + years

I setup a separate media pool and schedules for each of these -
Barcodes somewhat match these schedules, that makes it simple to
Separate what tapes have what data on them

NTD100 - NTD201
NTW100 - NTW201
NTM100 - NTY201
NTY100 - NTY201
HPD100 - HPD201
HPW100 - HPW201
HPM100 - HPM201
HPY100 - HPY201
EXC100 - EXC201






Eric Ljungblad
Computer Operator
Copley Information Services
Eric.Ljungblad < at > copleypress.com
(858) 729-8010

-----Original Message-----
From: Dave Markham [mailto:dave.markham < at > fjserv.net]
Sent: Wednesday, January 12, 2005 6:49 AM
To: Hindle, Greg
Cc: veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
Subject: Re: [Veritas-bu] Backup retention Standards?

Hindle, Greg wrote:

Hello,
I am in the process of re-evaluating our companies backup retention
policies. I wanted to get feedback from others who use Netbackup as to
what they use in their own environments. What I need to know is how
frequently you backup certain files and how long do you keep them
before expiring those backups? We have mixture of applications and
platforms here so any insight to what your setup is would be great. In
particular SQL, ORACLE, EXCHANGE, Financial Applications, user data,
Peoplesoft applications, Windows servers, Unix servers etc.

Thanks in advance,
Greg




The information contained in this e-mail transmission is
privileged and/or confidential intended solely for the exclusive use
of the individual addressee. If you are not the intended addressee you
are hereby notified that any retention, disclosure or other use is
strictly prohibited. If you have received this notification in error,
please immediately contact the sender and delete the material.

I have various customers and sometimes the requirements differ but i try
and keep a best practice. I mostly deal with solaris so will explain
what i do

I have a policy for OS files, one for application and one for databases
which each contain the same schedule information but different file and
client lists for the application and database policies.

I keep cumulative incremental backups for 1 week and normally leave
those tapes in the jukebox unless they get full ( monitored via a script )
Weekly full backups are removed and stored in a fireproof safe and
retained for 4 weeks in netbackup
Monthly full backups run every 4 weeks and expire in 3 months. Again
removed after running
Quarterly backups are run every 3 months and kept for 1 year. Again
removed after running
Yearly backups are run every year and retained for 5 years. Again
removed after running.

This may be excessive but seems to work quite well.

In addition to above i do the following

Have a log_archive policy which is a user_archive and i run a cron job
on each machine to find log locations of type file only and issue a
bparchive withe the list. These i keep for 7 years or infinity depending
on setup. The logs are archived and so removed after use.

I also have a DR ( disaster recovery ) policy which various from
customer to customer. The latest one i have done is an InlineTapeCopy of
the each schedule. I have this taken offsite daily as its written to a
different tape pool. I retain these for 2 weeks before they return to
site and into the scratch pool.

hope this helps
Thanks