Critique this backup strategy

[Asgorath]

Ok, to start, we are a ~75 person company running a handful of servers...

SQLa
SQLb (Failover cluster, Databases kept on SAN)
Weba
Webb (Network Load Balanced, Some data on SAN, some local)
Exchange
File
Utility (This acts as backup server)
Citrix

We have two external tape drives ... one LTO2 drive and one LTO3 drive

We currently have licensing for Symantec BackupExec 11d. I am thinking about also buying licensing for either Symantec Recovery 7.0 or Acronis True Image Echo Server Enterprise with True Image Echo Server Entperprise Universal Restore.

So here's the plan

Once a month, total server image to disk using Symantec Recovery or Acronis TIES. Kept on disk and copied to tape.

Friday Evening....Backup all data files to disk on backup server.
Friday Evening...Continuous Backup Server running
Saturday Evening....Disk -> Tape
Monday-Thurs Evening...Differential Tape of all data files from Friday's tape.
Mon-Fri ... Move tape from last night offsite


Here's a few recovery scenarios

Server Dies
- Mount Latest system image in VMWare Workstation on LA-Utility
- Restore Latest data to system image
- Point DNS to vitual server
- Get new Hardware Server
- Put in Recovery CD, point it to the UNC share hosting the server image
- Get server up. If dissimilar hardware, put in appropriate drivers where needed
- Patch Server
- Restore current data onto server
- Bring down Virtual Server
- Restore current data onto server (data may have changed since the last time we restored data)
- Point DNS at new server

Server Room Burns down
- On at least one server...
- If its a keeper... Put in recovery CD....plug an LTO3 tape drive into server...restore server from drive image
- If its a temp...Install VMWare Server/Workstation...Plus in an LTO3 tape drive insto server...Copy drive images onto server...mount servers in VMWare Server
- From backup server/ backup server image....push latest files to all servers
- Repeat steps from recoverying one server above.

What do you guys think?

 

[exstyle]

With your offsite backups once a week you may have potential for data loss via fire. Are the tapes kept in a fire proof box?

 

[Asgorath]

With your offsite backups once a week you may have potential for data loss via fire. Are the tapes kept in a fire proof box?

Typo in my plan. It's a daily tape.

Friday - Full Data Tape
Mon-Thurs - Differential Data Tape