Tape backup logic for new backup server

[aaron@ARB]

Hi all,

I am looking at replacing our ageing Dell r720xd with a new r740xd2 server with 60tb of storage with a Dell EMC ML3 lto-8 library.

The question I have is around how I would engineer the tape logic to achieve the following outcomes

1) Ongoing backup chain on disk to the size of the available storage. I.e have 6 months of daily backups online
2) Backup a point in time once a month to be kept offsite as a monthly backup in perpetuity. By this I mean a self contained backup from say the first of every month. I don't want any incrementals or such like, just a self contained backup from the night.

What would be the most appropriate way to achieve the above? I'm conscious of not wanting to waste tape (as LTO 8 tapes are NOT cheap), so i dont want incrementals and such like, ideally just single full VBK's.

Any thoughts?

Cheers, Aaron

[HannesK]

Hello,
I would go with 183 days / restore points (6 months) reverse incremental on REFS and do a backup to tape job. I assume that your tape job completes before the next backup job starts.

With this setup, it is impossible to copy incrementals to tape with the "backup to tape" job. And you don't need to create a virtual synthetic full for forward forever incremental backup chains.

Of cause, you can also go with forward incremental with synthetic / active full backups. Just make sure, that you don't check the "incremental backup" in the tape job

Best regards,
Hannes