I'm wondering what others are doing in the following regard:
We've got departments that are converting their microfiche records to digital. This is a fairly large volume of data that will never change but which needs to be accessible to users on a daily basis. The conundrum is backup -- in a way adding this data to the daily backup doesn't make sense as it never changes, so why included it in the existing daily backup routine. On the other hand if I want to excluded it from the daily backup then that's one more backup customization we have to do to cause the backup to omit those folders. I think such customizations are an opportunity for something to go wrong down the road.
An alternative is to put the data in a folder that is already outside any of the folders that the backup targets (maybe even on a separate server), and just add any such future microfiche folders to that same, separate folder. In this case I would need to do at least two backups to tape and put the tapes on a shelf somewhere, and remember to refresh those tapes occasionally, and remember to transfer them in the event we change backup software.
I'm thinking, for simplicity sake and fail-safety sake just include that data -- even though it'll never change -- in the daily backup and let it consume whatever backup disk space it needs. The daily will still scan that data for changes that will never occur but at least I won't have to worry about:
- tapes to create, store and maintain in the short and long terms
- customization of the daily backup (to omit that data)
- what i do if both tape sets go bad.
Does my thinking seem reasonable? Basically it boils down to "use the extra disk space in my existing disk-to-disk-to-tape backup and avoid the management headache."