Backup Tape rotation with Corona-virus.

As with many of you, the Corona-virus has caused many changes.



One for my company is, the bank would not allow us to enter the lobby and
safe deposit box area. We kept our daily/weekly/monthly tape rotation in a
safe deposit box. Every day (except Saturday, Sunday and bank holidays) we
would take the previous night’s backup to the safe deposit box and retrieve
the next tape in the rotation. Saturday, Sunday and bank holidays we saved
to save files.



The quick solution was to pull all tapes from the safe deposit box and have
an employee that is working on site keep them at their home and every day
do the rotation.



So the question now is what if that person is sick or takes vacation or…



I have been tasked to look for alternatives. Here are some thoughts I have
had.



1. We could use the save file every day (one save file for each day).

a. This assumes we have the storage space.

b. We could then save these to tape once a week or something and take off
site.

2. I have been looking at a virtual tape image catalog.

a. I assume this will have some sort of compression so the storage space
requirement would be less.

b. We could then save these to tape once a week or something and take off
site.

3. We do have a disaster recovery box about 45 miles away that we
replicate too using iTera.

a. Could we do the save to that box (not affecting our DR) using the
virtual tapes or some other method?

i. Assuming our connection is big enough to
handle the volume.

4. We could purchase a tape library device.

a. That would get our daily save that we want.

b. To get it off site we could put it at our DR location.

i. Assuming our connection is big enough to
handle the volume.



Currently we have an auditor’s requirement of encrypted tape off site
storage. I am sure if we came up with a good solution we could get the
auditor’s to agree to it.



I cannot be the only one in this boat.

Any thoughts would be kindly accepted.