Backup, Restore, and Archiving Policy for the UVM School of Business Files, Chat, and eMail

The purpose of this policy is to define what digital data is backed up onto LTO1 tape media.  The policy will address how long the backups are retained and the procedure for overwriting or destroying out of date media.  The policy is enforced programmatically using Veritas Backup Exec, Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service, and physical movement of backup media.

Faculty, Staff, and Student directories are backed up according to the schedule defined by a Veritas policy.  Media sets are defined by daily differential and full backup.  The daily differential backups are run on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday.  The tapes are overwritten at the next differential backup.  The full backup is run each Friday.  Media are overwrite protected for two weeks and are appendable for 16 days.  There are 11 tapes in this set.  The final Friday full backup in December is pulled from the rotation and archived for 1 year.  Each month the final Friday full backup is moved to an off-site location.
 
Shadow copies of the Faculty and Staff directories are taken at 8:00 A.M. and 1:00 P.M. every day.  These snapshots allow a client to retrieve previous versions of documents.  The client must have the Volume Shadow Copy service enabled on their workstation to recover previous versions of documents.  The shadow copy backup is written to a drive with a capacity of 21 GB.  Shadow copies are overwritten once the capacity is reached.

The Microsoft Exchange and Live Communication databases are backed up on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.  Only the components necessary for disaster recovery are backed up.  Individual mailboxes are not backed up.  Media are overwrite protected for 1 week and are appendable for 30 days.