July 7, 2011 at 1:59 pm
Hi ALL,
I have come across various posts and many save backups for more than a week. If at all we have full backups every 5 days, shouldn't 5 days be more than enough. Am I missing something ?
Whatever is the full backup cycle, I think that should be enough as long as its more than 2 days (to cover the weekend) ?
Please suggest
July 7, 2011 at 2:02 pm
It depends entirely on your business needs.
Will you ever need to roll data back more than 2 days?
Do you test restoring your backups every day?
What would happen if you lost the disk with the backups on it? Do you have offsite storage you could recover them from?
- Gus "GSquared", RSVP, OODA, MAP, NMVP, FAQ, SAT, SQL, DNA, RNA, UOI, IOU, AM, PM, AD, BC, BCE, USA, UN, CF, ROFL, LOL, ETC
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July 7, 2011 at 2:04 pm
Like Gus said, it depends on Business needs and any regulations that may affect your business. I have worked in shops where we were required to save backups for 30 years. Other places we needed to keep 7 years. I don't necessarily agree with keeping 30 years of backups due to inherent restore complications, but sometimes the choice is not ours to make.
Jason...AKA CirqueDeSQLeil
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July 7, 2011 at 2:06 pm
Most cases I have seen include full backups over the weekend due to low activity on the server and differential backups every night on week days with log backups depending on business need.
Besides it better to have slight old backup than to have none at all (ie if the backup set itself fails)
July 7, 2011 at 3:17 pm
In my opinion, it is a combination of the needs of the business and the space limitations you have for the backups.
There needs to be a happy meeting place between those two.
1) Are you limited to keeping backups only on the local server?
2) Do you have an external location to keep more backups?
3) What is the business actually requiring?
Sometimes the compromise is to keep 1 week of backups available for quick access if necessary for restore.
Then each week (maybe Sunday) keep a full backup for a longer period (1 month)
Then each month (1st day of the month) keep a full backup for a longer period (1 year)
I really depends on the type of data running through your databases.
Is it mostly static and not changing?
There are SO many variables involved in your backup strategy that it is impossible to suggest something without more info being provided by you.
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