Retention of 30 years on different storage types

[TG-IT]

Dear all,

I have a question concerning back-ups, back-up copy and retention policy.
A client wants to keep one full back-up every year, for 30 years.
The problem is, the storage where the back-up is being placed on is too small for that. So, I want to have them on different storage types

It's Veeam back-up and Recovery 7.0.0.833
It's taking a back-up to QNAP 1
then a secondary job takes place, making a copy to QNAP 2

Back-up Job: keep 60 restore points
Back-up Job Copy: restore points to keep 7, weekly back-up: 4, Monthly back-up: 4, Quarterly back-up: 0, Yearly back-up: 1.
The Qnaps both have 5,4 TB but QNAP2 has no free disk space left.

So I guess, it's practically impossible to have 30 yearly back-ups.

What is the best way to do this? I still don't really get the concept of restore points, retention policy, etc...

Thanks in advance to all!

[Shestakov]

Hello Tom,

Well, if the client doesn`t have enough free space, there are several ways to go:
-decrease number of restore points (use less full backups, more increments)
-increase deduplication ratio
-upgrade the repository
-use additional types of repositories(cloud, tape)

If he doesn`t have enough space, he can schedule less weekly/monthly backups, what will give him space for several yearly backups.

By the way, it`s pretty difficult to predict how far the progress will be in 30 years, and most likely you(the client) will upgrade the repository several times. Thanks!

[TG-IT]

Hi Nikita!

Thanks for your feedback!

Is it possible to move a couple of back-ups onto hard disk without affecting the copy job?

For example: the copy job has run en has stored back-ups to go back 2 years.
Can I simply move those two full back-ups to an external hard drive without the current job creating new one.

Thanks!

[Shestakov]

Yes, you can add a new repository, move historical backups there and rescan the repository.
Be aware that you need to move single full backups or the whole backup chains.
You can rather utilize GFS retention on rotated media.
Thanks.

[Gostev]

Can we step back a little?

I don't think 30 years is even remotely practical choice for a disk-based storage. They will lose their data a few times in 30 years due to hard drive malfunctions and all sorts of silent corruptions. As the result, they will never achieve their goal - meaning, we are simply wasting time discussing what will all end up in a failure to achieve their objective (guaranteed). They might as well do nothing with the same result (unless they need a check box to show someone that they are doing something).

Now, if they really care about their data... have they considered tape?
Enterprise-grade tape is really the ultimate media for their use case.

[TG-IT]

Exactly, I can follow you perfectly here. I will have to spend too much time in this, knowing that this will probably fail.

Tape is not an option, that's why I have to explore all posibilities I have with Veeam, Qnap and External HDD's.

Thanks for your feedback!

[Shestakov]

Just an interesting fact about data storage,
In 1985 (30 years ago) IBM announced its newest Extended Capability Model of the IBM 3380E with the record 2.5 GB of memory. Now you can barely find 2 GB USB drive in stores.
Thanks.