Defining a backup strategy
There is no one perfect backup strategy that meets everyone’s needs. Therefore, it is important to define your backup requirements before you decide on a backup strategy. Use the questions in this topic to help you determine your backup requirements.
- Do I need backups?
- Can information be recreated easily?
- If I do not have backups, how will that affect my business?
- Am I legally required to have backups?
- How frequently should my backups be done?
- Daily
- Weekly
- Monthly
- Only when a volume is full
- How will backups be done?
- Incremental backup
- Partial or selective backups
- Complete backups
- When do I want the system to perform the backups?
- During first, second, or third shift
- On the weekend
- Will there be other contentions for the optical drives?
- Will the target volume contain backups for one or multiple volumes?
- How long do I keep source information after a backup has been completed?
- What type of availability is needed for volumes?
- In optical media library
- Out of optical media library, but on-site
- Out of optical media library, and off-site
This is not a complete list of items to consider when deciding on a backup strategy, but rather a foundation on which you can build.