Full backup to tape

[russwatkins]

Hi,

I'm wanting to archive on a monthly basis off to tape. I have a 32 day retention policy and run a full backup job on a Friday, with incrementals every other day.

I only want to take the full backup nearest to the end of the month off to tape - i'm not bothered about long term storage of the incrementals.

My question is, if I only keep on tape a full backup job when incrementals exist along with the metadata file, will I be able to restore from it?

[Gostev]

Hi, yes.

[russwatkins]

Great stuff. Many thanks!

[Gostev]

For long-term archival, best practice is to also include extract.exe on every tape, to make sure you are able to restore the data even 10 years from now

[dellock6]

If you're going to restore ten years from now, include also ESXi intaller CD (and store a x86 server somewhere)