How about :

Daily and Weekly kept for a month.
Run a monthly backup that's kept for a year.
If you need to, run a yearly backup that you keep for 7 years.

This should use slightly fewer tapes than your current rotation.

Cheers,
Dean
----- Original Message -----
From: Heine Didriksen <heine.didriksen AT nhh DOT no>
Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2004 09:35:47 +0200
Subject: [Veritas-bu] Tape rotation - Best practice?
To: veritas-bu AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu

 
Hi, 
  
I am running Netbackup 5.0 on one W2K master and two tapelibraries, a
HP MSL5030 with two LTO1 and a Dell Powervault 136T with one LTO1.
The Dell takes care of our exchange backup, while the HP takes the filebackup. 
Currently, we have about 160GB of Exchange (full backup every night),
and around 1TB of filedata (Full backup once a week, and cum incr
every night.)
We have 6 months retention on the full backups, and three on the
incrementals. Naturally, this generates a lot of tapes, and the bosses
have asked me to reconsider the tape rotation.
  
So now I am looking for input from others. I have always thought that
six months is a lot, and I have never done restores from tapes more
that a month old.
  
Can anybody share their points of view on this matter? 
Experiences and suggestions will be greatly appreciated. 
  
-Heine Didriksen 
 Bergen, Norway