SBS2008 ackup Rotation

Hi,

What is the reccomended SBS2008 server rotation for a network with 30 users.
SBS 2008 backup is used currently with 2 usb drives on a rotation system
where one drive is taken off site on a weekly basis.

The backup operator was used to taking tapes offsite each night, weekly and
monthly rotation system in place. Is a 2 usb drive system adequate? There is
money available for more drives if required. Normal or Incremental?

Have other sites with a mix of Acronis to RD1000 drives for weekly offsite
and disaster recovery backups in addition to the nightly SBS2008 backups to
usb drives. Would be looking to eliminate using Acronis for this server
istall.

Interested in how others configure thier backups. How many drives, rotation
system in place etc. If affordability is not an issue what would be the
ultimate protection?

Looking forward to hearing some alternate views

Susan

I doubt there is a one-size fits all answer here. Or even a one-size fits
many.

A legal office, for example, with 30 employees will have *very* different
data retention policies than a local organic foods business with a similar
employee count. Two examples pulled from my one stash of clients.

I've set the law office up with a grandfather-father-son backup scheme,
where there are yearly, monthly, weekly, and daily media rotations. The
weekly, monthly, and yearly are stored offsite. The daily is an incremental
from the weekly.

The local store has three drives rotated weekly with daily incremental
backups done. So even if a physical disaster were to occur, they'd lose up
to 4 days of data on the server, but the weekly schedule is set up so the
backup occurs on the day after the book-keeper does the weekly invoices,
etc. So the data lost would be other non-bookkeeping related items.

I could not have set up either backup scheme without sitting down, having a
detailed conversation with the client, and finding out what their needs are,
what their current business practices are, what compliance issues may exist,
and what level of risk they can handle compared to their budget. It is a
balancing act.

....but there ya go, I gave you two examples.

-Cliff


"Technobabe" <> wrote in message
news:92D533C1-60AE-4672-BE7B-...
> Hi,
>
> What is the reccomended SBS2008 server rotation for a network with 30
> users.
> SBS 2008 backup is used currently with 2 usb drives on a rotation system
> where one drive is taken off site on a weekly basis.
>
> The backup operator was used to taking tapes offsite each night, weekly
> and
> monthly rotation system in place. Is a 2 usb drive system adequate? There
> is
> money available for more drives if required. Normal or Incremental?
>
> Have other sites with a mix of Acronis to RD1000 drives for weekly offsite
> and disaster recovery backups in addition to the nightly SBS2008 backups
> to
> usb drives. Would be looking to eliminate using Acronis for this server
> istall.
>
> Interested in how others configure thier backups. How many drives,
> rotation
> system in place etc. If affordability is not an issue what would be the
> ultimate protection?
>
> Looking forward to hearing some alternate views
>
> Susan

We are a small 30 person non-profit.

At the moment, we are doing a two drive rotation, just as you are.

This is a significant improvement over SBS 2003, because many weeks of
backups fit on the same 1/2 gig drives we were using with '2003. For 2003,
they held about one weeks worth. (and the drive capacity of the 2008 server
is far greater)

However, I think we should at minimum be using another drive. A third drive
would allow for rotation off site when the staff person assigned to take the
drive off site forgets to bring it in, or is on vacation or sick...

The stock SBS backup system is not well documented--there's a good blog
entry somewhere that will tell you that the first backup to new media is a
FULL backup, and further backups will be incremental to that full
backup--so, regardless of the haphazard way you might attach and detach
media, each backup is effectively a full backup--a complete restore can be
done from that media alone.

I think once I have a clear picture of the media capacity of my current
drives, I will sit down with the financial manager and think about whether
there are data retention issues we should think about in terms of the backup
rotation. Maybe we'd add a drive to be used for monthly or quarterly
backups...

When we used Dat drives--in the early days of the 2003 server, we had a 6
week rotation. We're fortunate to not have significant data retention
policies mandated from the outside world.

"Technobabe" <> wrote in message
news:92D533C1-60AE-4672-BE7B-...
> Hi,
>
> What is the reccomended SBS2008 server rotation for a network with 30
> users.
> SBS 2008 backup is used currently with 2 usb drives on a rotation system
> where one drive is taken off site on a weekly basis.
>
> The backup operator was used to taking tapes offsite each night, weekly
> and
> monthly rotation system in place. Is a 2 usb drive system adequate? There
> is
> money available for more drives if required. Normal or Incremental?
>
> Have other sites with a mix of Acronis to RD1000 drives for weekly offsite
> and disaster recovery backups in addition to the nightly SBS2008 backups
> to
> usb drives. Would be looking to eliminate using Acronis for this server
> istall.
>
> Interested in how others configure thier backups. How many drives,
> rotation
> system in place etc. If affordability is not an issue what would be the
> ultimate protection?
>
> Looking forward to hearing some alternate views
>
> Susan