Top 10 Things You Want in Your Backup Contract (Part 9)

Backup Incrementals: If your backup system is the traditional grandparent/parent-child process, make sure you have the backup points defined. If your system covers a series of short-term incremental backups (minutes, hours, days, weeks) and longer-term incremental backups (months, years), you need to have this schedule defined so there are no misunderstandings about your recovery points. 

Backup Schedule: Many backup solutions will start their process from when the initial master backup is complete. This is rarely done on the first of the month, so each “monthly” incremental can also be on a mid-month boundary. This is very important when it comes to getting a restore of “last month’s” financials. Many systems create monthly backups that are really four weeks in length, thereby giving you 13 “months” in a year. The better you define this, the better you will be covered.

Length of Backup: Newer backup technologies may cover only certain periods of time or may only have the ability to maintain so much history, since they could be appliance-based. If you need to periodically “restart” the backup process to free up room, make sure you have a way to extract the current history and take it offsite for safekeeping. (Also make sure you have a way to restore from it, in case you need to access it.)

Rolling Histories: Some systems maintain a rolling (or snapshot-based) history. If you utilize one of those, make sure you have a process for making a historical “snapshot” of the history that you can archive off site.

Beware Deletions of Backup History: Many current systems allow for the deletion of intermediate history to free up space on the backup appliance. I would suggest that if you get into a situation where you are required to remove intermediate history, you have a sign-off form separate from your contract whereby your customer agrees to the process.