Re: Backing up my iSeries with tape

     Hi all,
      
     2. Frequency of backups?

   There is an issue of access that I have as an IT professional, that may be
   different for wherever you are in the management authority.  As an IT
   person, I have to get cooperation of other people off the system to do a
   backup, in a company where the political climate is that anyone who wants
   to access the system 24x7 has to be asked pretty please for a window of
   access, and often forgets they agreed to let IT have that window, so
   usually what I do is backup in wee hours of weekend when I have observed
   very few actually seem to be using the system.  If the AS/400 and our
   software was not so reliable, perhaps the end users might be clamoring for
   more frequent backups.

     3. How long do you keep your tapes in rotation before quality of tape
     comes
     into play

   This varies by manufacturer.  Currently we using IBM tapes, which seem to
   last forever, but they very expensive.  Under prior management, they went
   with el cheapo brand names, in which if a tape lasted more than 2 months,
   we were lucky.  I tried to show them SST statistics by brand name, to
   justify paying more for quality, but they weren't interested in anything
   other than lowest purchase price of tapes that might get 10 uses then die,
   and they did not want to spend twice as much on a brand name that was good
   for thousands of uses.  Like I say, it depends where you are in company
   management structure, how much clout you have to get best bang for the
   buck.

   There is a related issue of off-line data storage.  Let's suppose you want
   to store data from end month, end year, physical inventory, historical
   archives to make available to auditors if needed, years from now ... how
   do you store data that went into W2s in case of audit of that data years
   from now? Then you switch hardware, upgrade, need to be able to access
   data from several years ago, that involved an earlier version of your
   operating system, maybe even different software package for the data.  You
   need to use backup media that has a shelf life of years.  Diskettes have
   10 years life, but you need to have dual sets, incase one goes bad.  Tapes
   shelf life 3 months if we lucky.

   I have been pushing the notion that we copy end month reports (via Ops
   Nav) to CD Rom, which I consider to have superior quality in both shelf
   life and capacity.  Other folks pushing newer technologies for which I
   have no idea what will be the media of choice years from now, or how long
   we may wish to have access to end fiscal reports.

      
     4. What do people do for offsite backup?  I have heard of taking it to a
     sister company or another facility (which I have 70 miles away), or
     doing a
     safety deposit box at the bank.

   Think balance between convenience cost security.  How far away does it
   make sense to have your tapes in the event of different kinds of
   emergencies.  Companies hit by Katrina and other large area disasters,
   other weather, earthquakes, it was no good that a backup tape was a few
   miles away, the disaster potentially wiped out where the computer was and
   also the tapes.  How long until access bank safety deposit box after such
   a disaster?  Banks are not open except through a narrow window, so you
   have to have the tape in someone possession until then.

   Let's suppose a tape that an employee was transporting in personal vehicle
   gets stolen or lost.  Is there stuff on that tape (employee SSN# in
   payroll ap, customer bank credit card # info) such that you need to report
   to customers, government what all got lost or in hands of crook, news
   media get ahold of scandal? 

   In many geographies, if that data is encrypted, you not have to tell a
   soul that you no longer have physical possession of the tape.  It not
   matter if the encryption is no damn good.  I have heard tell that if the
   time comes that a tape drive is going flakey, and the data involved
   encrypted, you can forget about recovering anything from the tape.

      
     Anything else I am forgetting about concerning tape backups?  Any other
     best
     practices?

   I will address in a later separate post, to avoid one being excessively
   long.

      
     Thanks,
     Aaron Bartell
     http://mowyourlawn.com
      

   -
   Al Macintyre
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:AlMac
   http://www.ryze.com/go/Al9Mac
   BPCS/400 Computer Janitor ... see
   http://radio.weblogs.com/0107846/stories/2002/11/08/bpcsDocSources.html