Good afternoon,

This being the first time I've been responsible for doing backups, I'm a
bit lost and sure could use some enlightening with regard to run and
dump cycles and general rules of thumb.  Basically, I'm a backup newbie.

We've got an external Compaq eight cassette 20/40Gb DAT autoloader
hanging off of one of our linux boxes with seven tapes and one cleaner. 
There are 10 other machines (linux and Solaris) that will have to have
various filesystems backed up, but I need to figure out how often to
back up and what's the best way to cycle the tapes and whatnot.

Is the general rule of thumb to use one tape for a respective day -- one
that gets used repeatedly on Mondays, another for Tuesdays, etc.?  And
when the tape comes back into use, does the previous data get
overwritten or is it appended to the previous dump?  Like I said, I'm
pretty much a complete newbie with respect to backups, so I apologise if
these are "dumb questions" that any schmuck should know.  But I'd sure
appreciate any suggestions and recommendations.

Thanks in advance,

-Charlie