November 27, 2000
Advanced Imaging Inc
Backup Strategy DRAFT
Introduction
There can be no hard and fast rules about a backup strategy because every application is different.What really matters is that a pratical, relevant strategy whick makes backup an everyday fact of life for IT staff - a routine process that ensures backup always takes place as and when it should.
The GFS Strategy
The GFS strategy is a method maintaining backups on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. GFS backup schemes are based on seven-day weekly schedule, beginning any day. However, Advanced Imaging Inc currently operates on a five-day weekly schedule, which began on November 22, 2000 at 11:59 PM. Although the GFS strategy was originally designed for seven-day weekly schedule, the current backup software (ArcServe) supports a five-day weekly GFS strategy.
A full backup will be performed at least once a week, which shall be every Friday at 11:59 PM. All other days, an incremental backup will be performed respectively on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday at 11:59 PM. The incremental backup was chosen to conserve the amount of tapes utilized as well as decreasing the actual backup time.
The term GFS stands for Grandfather-Father-Son. The daily backups are the Son. The last full backup in the week (the weekly backup) is the Father. The last full backup of the month (the monthly backup) is the Grandfather. Advanced Imaging Inc will utilize all types of backup including daily backups, weekly backups, and monthly backups. By default, the daily media will be re-used after four days. Weekly media can be overwritten after five weeks have passed since it was last written to. Monthly media are saved throughout the year. The monthly media shall be taken off-site for storage, and be re-used the following year.
The primary purpose of the GFS backup strategy is to suggest a minimum standard and consistent interval at which to rotate and retire the media.
Tape Labeling
The proper label on the tape will allow a quicker recovery in the event of data loss. Since tapes will be re-used, the labels will need to be properly labeled and changed. The daily media will be need to re-labeled with the date, day, type of backup, and number of tapes. For example:
November 29, 2000 TUE
Incremental 1 of 1 DAILY
The weekly and monthly media will be need to re-labled accordingly, however, a distinct word such as "weekly" and "monthly" will be necessary. Essentially, every tape that will be labeled with the day "FRI" is a weekly tape and last tape of the month labeled "FRI" is a monthly tape. This is true, since the full backup is performed every Friday. For example:
December 1, 2000 FRI
Full 1 of 1 WEEKLY
or
December 29, 2000 FRI
Full 1 of 1 MONTHLY
Calendar
There will be a master calendar which displays the GFS backup strategy. The calendar shall display on a particular day - the type of backup, the physical format name of the tape, and whether it be a daily, weekly, or monthly media.
Cleaning
Cleaning the drive's tape heads regularly should be an integral part of Advanced Imaging Inc's data security. The drive's tape heads will be cleaned the last Friday of every month.
Data To Be Backup Up
The data that will be backed up are as follows:
Server 1 - E:\*.*
Individual Workstations - C:\*.* (user requests)
Restoration
The restore process in the event of a data loss shall be executed professionall and quickly. The restoration process depends on which day the data was lost. For example, if the the data was lost on a Monday, then only one tape will be required for restoration since Friday's contains a full backup. Furthermore, if data was lost on a Thursday, then the previous Friday's tape will be required as well as incremental backup tapes leading up to Thursday will be required for a proper restoration.