+1 In addition to this excellent point, it should be noted that an excessively long retention period could be as bad as having too short of a retention period, as it opens you up to greater electronic discovery in the event of legal action.
Choose wisely, and work with senior management and legal counsel to develop the right data management policies. Barring conflicts with regulatory requirements, I typically try to work towards the following: -- Daily Backups maintained for up to 15 days -- Weekly Backups maintained for up to 5 weeks -- Monthly backups for up to 12-24 months -- Annual backups for up to 2 or 3 years (optional if maintaining 24 monthly backups) Some systems might have more stringent retention, for example a key database system maintaining 30 daily and 52 weekly backups. Whatever the configuration, it should be documented. *ASB *(Professional Bio <http://about.me/Andrew.S.Baker/bio>) *Harnessing the Advantages of Technology for the SMB market... * On Fri, Jun 3, 2011 at 9:22 AM, N Parr <npar...@mortonind.com> wrote: > That's really a question for your management. Your business type and > other laws/guidelines will tell you how long you need to keep your data, the > media it's put on is irrelevant. When we were still backing up to tape we > did a daily full backup 4 week rotation with a month end and then kept the > year end forever. > > ------------------------------ > *From:* David Mazzaccaro [mailto:david.mazzacc...@hudsonmobility.com] > *Sent:* Friday, June 03, 2011 8:12 AM > *To:* NT System Admin Issues > *Subject:* Tape backup policies > > Hello everyone. > > For those who are still backing up to tape… > > What do you guys have for tape backup policies? > > I’m curious as to how far back you are keeping tapes – 1 year? 5 years? > > I’ve typically seen a 10 tape rotation w/ a monthly tape put in > offsitestorage. > > Is this still common practice? > > ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ --- To manage subscriptions click here: http://lyris.sunbelt-software.com/read/my_forums/ or send an email to listmana...@lyris.sunbeltsoftware.com with the body: unsubscribe ntsysadmin
