Davina is right. You could mitigate the risk somewhat by cloning the annual
full, but a year is an awfully long time for tapes to be lost, damaged or
just "go bad".

Conrad Macina
Pfizer, Inc.


On Wed, 27 Sep 2006 11:56:54 +0100, Davina Treiber
<DavinaTreiber AT PEEVRO.CO DOT UK> wrote:

>William M. Fennell wrote:
>
>>Hi,
>>
>>We're thinking of doing full backups once yearly,
>>level 1 monthly, level 5 weekly and level 9 nightly.
>>Are there any Networker gotchas that would present a problem with this
>>scheme?
>>
>>
>>
>
> From a NetWorker point of view, your scheme would work. You might also
>want to consider assigning different retention periods for these level
>backups, and putting them in pools that correspond to the different
>retention period. Suddenly your config has got a whole lot more complicated.
>
>
> From a practical point of view, I would NEVER do this. If I was your
>boss I would fire you for this.  ;-)
>You would be placing a huge reliance on one full backup. If a tape goes
>bad from your full backup you have lost the capability to restore all
>your backups for up to a year. I get jittery about having full backups
>less frequently than weekly, but on problem clients (such as perhaps
>those backing up over slow WAN links) I might consider a schedule with a
>monthly full and a weekly level 5 or similar. I would never risk
>anything less than a monthly full. Most companies' data is far too precious.
>
>
>Good luck - you might be needing it.
>
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