migrating from tape to disc for backups, using Backup Exec

[Kremlar]

Anyone familiar with Backup Exec?

I'm trying to wrap my head around how exactly I should be using
'backup-to-disk' now that I've decided to ditch tapes here for my small
office. Running Backup Exec 12.5.

With tapes, we typically had 1 tape for each day of the week (plus weekends)
and simply rotated through them. We didn't pay much attention to overwrite
protection time. We ran full backups nightly, so each tape had a full
backup from that day of the week.

I'm looking to move to disk, but am not quite sure how I should be setting
it up. Should I create one 'backup-to-disk' folder for each day of the
week, and a different backup job for each day of the week?

Or should I have 2 folders, 1 for a full backup and another for
incrementals? And have 2 backup jobs, one that backs up full on Monday and
the rest that backs up differentials every other day of the week?

Should I be using differential or incremental, what are the advantages of
each? Or should I be doing fulls for each day like I was with tape?

To create an off-site backup, can i just take a file copy of one of the
backup-to-disk folders?

Basically I'm looking for some overall backup advice....

I'm backing up about 40GB of data per server (2 servers).

Thanks in advance.

 

[yinan]

There are alot of different ways to do this. What I would recommend is that you use media sets to manage the retention times and use 1 folder. I would still do all fulls they are easier to work with. Also, this will eat through a lot of disk space quickly because you have to do the match of 40 x 2 x 7 for just one weeks worth of backups. Plus you have to also take into account whether and how many other weekly/monthly backups you want to keep on hand.

 

[Kremlar]

So, I could setup 1 folder, setup a retention time of say 1 week, then keep all full backups in that 1 folder? And it will be smart enough to overwrite when it is able to? I want to make sure it doesn't keep growing and growing....

Thanks again.