Monthly Backup

[pga001]

Hi all

How can I backup a database to tape so that I can restore every day over a month? I would like to put every month a tape aside so that for example I can restore in two years time a tape in order get a database of an exact day.

Thanks for help.

Patrick

[Shestakov]

Hi Patrick,
You need to backup to disk first and then use backup to tape job to write them on the tape media. You need to choose a proper retention(protection period) for tapes.
I would schedule active full runs once in 2-3 months to split the backup chain into chunks.
Thanks!

[pga001]

I use reverse incremental. Is it enough to add last 30 vrb files to the tape in addition to the full backup which already goes to the tape?

Thanks,
Patrick

[Shestakov]

How often do you run the tape job?
Reverse incremental is not the best method if you want to copy new changes to tapes daily. Using reverse incremental method you will have only full backups (.vbk) on your tapes.
However you may run the job monthly and have all the chain copied at once.

[pga001]

We replace the tapes every day and store them offsite. This is for disaster recovery. After 3 weeks they are reused except the one set we put away every month. To keep it simple I would like to have all database changes of the last 31 days on tape every set.

To collect the files on the disk and store them once a month would be possible but it seems a bit error prone.

[Shestakov]

If you want to have 31 daily backups on tapes in the same media set I would suggest switching the source backup job to forward incremental with monthly active full and run backup to tape job daily.
However, if you want just one backup once a month, you can schedule a monthly active full for the source job and run backup to tape job once a month,
Thanks!