How we typically schedule backups:

Obviously every client is different and we work towards getting the best backup solution for your business and your business needs, but there are a few generals that we typically do in our client backup rotations.

Here is a “typical” backup for one of our clients and some of the reasoning behind why we do it this way.

1. We do full backups – This gives us multiple tapes and days to try and recover a file. If the most recent version is not available the one the previous day might be and having to re-enter 1 or 2 days worth of work is much easier than rebuilding from scratch. Also tapes can and do go bad so this gives us multiple chances to get a file back.

2. We recommend a 9 or 10 tape rotation with tapes for M-F and 4 or 5 Thursday tapes. This gives us a nightly backup M-W and on Fridays. It also gives us the capability to go back 4 or 5 weeks with the Thursday tapes in case we need to find a missing file that wasn’t noticed right away. Why Thursday? It is partially arbitrary, but also it is because there is another work day and this tends to help the person at the client site not forget to change the tape.

3. Data selection depends on client needs and tape capacity, but we do typically skip install files that might be placed on the server for convenience since they are on CD media elsewhere or re-downloadable if needed. This helps on clutter and helps with not backing up unnecessary files.

4. We go in under the user folders and remove MP3, M4A, M4V, WMA and other compressed music/video files from the backups by excluding those file extensions. This also helps on space and with folder redirection a lot of these files are not company related, but personal in nature. By doing it just on the user folder and sub folders it allows us to backup these files if they are in public shared folders.

How do you setup your backups (please just give general information)? What strategies have worked for you and what have you tried that didn’t work? On the ones that didn’t work were there specific reasons like us having the 4 or 5 “weekly Thursday” backup media being on Fridays and being missed more than the rest of the backups?

If you would like us to help review your backups or look at problems you are having feel free to contact us as always.