Good luck finding any documented "industry standards" for frequency and
retention periods. This discussion has been around for years, anybody use
the 'tower of Hanoi' backup tape rotation scheme? Most folks use the
Grandfather-father-son scheme for their backup method. 


It's difficult to have a standard because even businesses in the same
industry have different requirements on when data is backed up and how long
they need to keep older data. Some data will have legal requirements on
retention periods so it is easy to set up policies for that. Every thing
else is based on the data recovery service level agreements (verbal or
documented.) Policies on backup frequency and retention should be based off
the requirements the business has on data recovery.



Gary Andresen
Impossible Happens, Plan Ahead
Pacific Northwest Data Inc.
Tel: 503.701.5185
Fax: 503.692.3910
gary.andresen AT pnwdata DOT com
www.pnwdata.com

> -----Original Message-----
> From: veritas-bu-admin AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu [mailto:veritas-bu-
> admin AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu] On Behalf Of David Smith
> Sent: Sunday, April 04, 2004 4:46 PM
> To: Safran, Becky K; veritas-bu AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
> Subject: Re:[Veritas-bu] Standard Backup Frequency and Retention
> Guidelines?
> 
> At 2:57 PM -0500 4/2/04, Safran, Becky K wrote:
> >I work in a data center with 600+ UNIX and W2K servers using NetBackup.
> We
> >backup operating system, application and databases separately which
> equates
> >to 2000+ backup jobs running per day. I have an objective to reduce the
> >amount of data stored on tape. The approach I am taking is to update and
> >enforce a standard backup policy of frequency and retention periods. I
> have
> >been unable to find any "industry standards" on this topic.
> 
> Yep, same here.
> 
> >I am interested in what type of backup policies or guidelines are being
> used
> >in other companies. Any feedback would be helpful.
> 
> I am as well.
> 
> >We currently use the following guidelines:
> >
> >      OS and production Application backups are only run Weekly and
> Monthly.
> >
> >     Backup Retention options:
> >     Daily Database Backups                          2 weeks
> >     Daily Incremental Development Application Backups       2 weeks
> >    Weekly Backups                                   1 month
> >    Monthly Backups                                  3 months, 6 months
> >or 1 year
> >    Yearly Financial Backups                                 7 years
> >
> >Note: Monthly production backups are sent offsite for a period of 3
> months,
> >at which time, they are returned for the remainder of their retention
> >period.
> 
> We backup about 40 unix servers and 90 Intel servers.  Our standard
> backup schedule is:
> 
> User data:
> Daily incremental - 2 month retention
> Weekly Full - 1 year retention
> 
> System/other data:
> Daily incremental - 1 month retention
> Weekly Full - 2 month retention
> 
> 
> Log files:
> Daily incremental - 2 month retention
> Weekly Full - 1 year retention
> 
> 
> All fulls are duplicated and sent off site weekly for 3 weeks after
> which time they are returned and recycled..
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