Monthly backup schedule with drive replacment

[retro_tss]

I am fairly new to retrospect, and have been tasked to play with v9; I believe we are using v6 in our production environment.  As it stands I have several scripts in place in order for us to keep a months worth of backups in place, with each week separate.  Part of our backup regime is to take the backup hard drive to our offsite storage once a month.  While I haven't tested the scenario yet, I assume that when I put in a new hard drive, I will have to recreate all of my folders so that Retrospect continues to function accordingly.

 

Does this sound right?

 

Is there any easier way to go about things?

 

Thank in advance.

[twickland]

Backups are made to Backup Sets (in v6) or Media Sets (v8 and  later), each of which has one or more Members. The backup data is stored on each member in a proprietary format, unless you've been performing Copy scripts rather than Backup scripts.

 

You will not need to recreate any folders on the next hard drive, but you will need to decide whether the new hard drive will be a new member of an existing Media/Backup Set, or whether it will be the first member of a new Media/Backup Set.

 

I'd recommend spending a bit of time with the Retrospect User's Guide to familiarize yourself with the terminology and various approached to backups. There are also tutorials on the Retrospect website.

 

Recycling media sets saves money but you of course will lose all the previously backed up data. Expanding a media set indefinitely by adding members will eventually result in making restores more cumbersome than you'd probably like. We periodically perform what are called New Media backups, which enable us to create a new media set while retaining the established backup scripts. This allows us to keep our media sets conveniently-sized while enabling us to retain all our past backup data.

[retro_tss]

I use only backup scripts with recycled media in order to separate each week's backup and to save space.  I guess I would need to read up on how I would configure a new hard drive as a new or recycled member.  Here is my current schedule:

 

Saturday - Full Backup

 

Sunday - Backup Week 2 data to Week 3 folder.

 

Tuesday - Backup Week 1 data to Week 2 folder.

 

Thursday - Backup Full Backup to Week 1 folder.

 

Once a month backup all weeks, and current full backup to monthly folder.

 

Proactive backup backs up to current full backup.

[twickland]

I guess I would need to read up on how I would configure a new hard drive as a new or recycled member.

Reading up would be a good idea. By definition, a new hard drive volume can't be a recycled member.

 

After your reading, if you're still confused, please let us know:

1. How many media sets you're using, and what type they are.
2. How many members there are in each media set.
3. How many scripts are you running, and if there is more than one scheduler for each script.
4. What your hardware setup is.

[retro_tss]

Ok, I give.  Please help me understand what you meant about "decide whether the new hard drive will be a new member or a recycled member of an existing Media/Backup Set, or whether it will be the first member of a new Media/Backup Set."

 

I have 6 Media Sets, and each has a single Member that is recycled when each backup script runs, see previous post.  6 scripts, one for each Media Set.  Right now I'm using an early 2008 iMac with a 2.66 Core 2 Duo and 6GB of RAM running 10.8.5 for a proof of concept.  If we get everything worked out, then we'll be using our current Mac mini (I do not know the hardware of that one) with 10.6.8. 

 

The purpose of my backup schedules is so we can separate each week, and each month.  I'm also trying to get an idea of the steps I would need to take in order to include hard drive swapping.  You mentioned that I would not need to recreate any of my backup folders, how would I go about doing this?

 

Sorry if this has been covered in previous forum entries, or in the User Guide.  Either I'm not looking in the right sections of the guide, I feel as if the some of the documentation is vague.

 

Thanks again.

[twickland]

Ok, I give.  Please help me understand what you meant about "decide whether the new hard drive will be a new member or a recycled member of an existing Media/Backup Set, or whether it will be the first member of a new Media/Backup Set."

That garbled sentence happened when I was working on my response and left in something I meant to delete. My apologies. I've since corrected the original post. 

 

 

I have 6 Media Sets, and each has a single Member that is recycled when each backup script runs, see previous post.  6 scripts, one for each Media Set. 

With this information and your previous reference to "folders," are you saying that all 6 media set members reside on the same physical hard drive? If so, that's very risky. If (or should I say, when) that drive fails, you will lose all your data.

 

Rotating among media sets is a good idea, but each really ought to be on separate physical media.

 

Also remember that if you choose to recycle your backup media, you will lose all that historical data. The only reasons to perform recycle backups are to save space and to save money.

 

 

 Here is my current schedule:

 

Saturday - Full Backup

Sunday - Backup Week 2 data to Week 3 folder.

Tuesday - Backup Week 1 data to Week 2 folder.

Thursday - Backup Full Backup to Week 1 folder.

Once a month backup all weeks, and current full backup to monthly folder.

 

Proactive backup backs up to current full backup.

This is confusing. Are Week 1, Week 2, Week 3, Monthly, and Full Backup the names of your media sets? If so and if you're backing up the data from media set Week 2 to media set Week 3, how are you doing that? Are you performing a copy media set action? Or are you simply backing up all the .rdb data files as ordinary files? (I wouldn't recommend the latter.) And how and when are you backing up the data from your original sources (local volumes or clients, as the case may be) to each media set?

 

When I asked you to read the user's manual, it was at least in part to get you to use Retrospect's standard terminology.

 

More explicit details, please.