When I worked at a major pharmaceutical we had a procedure to do
periodic test restores and compare that to the data that should have
been there.  This was always fun given things that don't backup such as
door files on Sun etc...

FDA Validation requirements make S-OX look like a walk in the park.

-----Original Message-----
From: veritas-bu-bounces AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
[mailto:veritas-bu-bounces AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu] On Behalf Of spaldam
Sent: Wednesday, July 30, 2008 11:38 PM
To: VERITAS-BU AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
Subject: [Veritas-bu] Netbackup verify at write time


The best thing I can say is: "Make Multiple Copies".

This is why I always make sure I have at least 2 copies of my next
longest retention before expiring the shorter retention(S).

For example:

If you do weekly full backups, keep you're daily incremental backups for
at least 2 weeks.
In turn, if you're monthly backups have a longer retention, keep your
weekly full backups for at least 2 months.

Even if you verify the tape using a restore to be absolutely certain,
that tape will eventually deteriorate, and could potentially get
damaged.  Any kind of electronic media is far from indestructible.

If you truly paranoid, don't rely on your backup system as your only
point of recovery.  Backup systems should be first and foremost designed
for disaster recovery (although if you have the funds replication works
even better), and secondarily for long term legal and archival purposes,
and lastly as an operational recovery mechanism.  There are much better
ways to insure operational recovery (i.e. versioning filesystems) if you
are truly that paranoid.

I'm not saying your backup system can't do all three, and do them very
well, but there are other methods that work better for giving your
management the warm fuzzy they are looking for.  Of course if all they
really want is a warm fuzzy, just find some marketing documents that say
the likely hood of a problem is extremely low (there are plenty of them
out there).

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