Backup and Disaster Policies
I believe this is the best forum to ask this question. I have got 2 NetApp storage's: One on the Head Office and another on the DR site, which is basically storage to storage Replication with snapshots enabled. At present we don't take any kind of backups on the tapes or other drives. Is this a good practice? Do I have to still take the backups on the tape drives even though we have a DR site from where we can recover our data?
Software/Hardware used:
Netapp
Software/Hardware used:
Netapp
ASKED:
March 16, 2013 7:53 AM
UPDATED:
March 18, 2013 12:54 PM
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Do you “have to”? No. You certainly should.
There should be less concern about the medium of storage for backup data than for the security of the medium. (I.e., assuming that recovery can be done regardless of medium.) The fact that it’s stored in DR site system makes the data as viable as if it’s stored on tape medium.
At least as far as basic recovery goes, recovery should be fine and a recovery test should demonstrate that.
But recovery isn’t the only thing to think about. The ‘D’ also needs to be considered. Consider a ‘D’ where an employee with access messes with stored data. With some more thought, other definitions of ‘Disaster’ might give more reasons. It might be handy to have some off-line and off-site tapes that aren’t accessible.
A secondary site makes a good place to perform secure backups without interfering with daily production work. Unless you have a good reason not to, I’d make sure I had an inaccessible copy. IMO, it just doesn’t cost enough to make the conscious choice not to do it.
Tom