Information Technology Infrastructure Policies

Backup and Backup Retention Policy

IT organizations of all sizes contend with a growing data footprint with more data to manage, protect and preserve for longer periods of time. Online primary storage, has focus a on fast low latency, reliable access to data while near-line secondary storage has a focus on low cost and high capacity. Long-term data retention requires a combination of ultra-low cost, good performance during storage and retrieval, and reduced footprint in terms of power, cooling, floor-space and economics (PCFE) - also known as a small green footprint - for inactive data.

Factors that CIOs and IT professionals need to consider for data retention include:

• Business and regulatory requirements – regulatory compliance and data preservation
• Economic and budgetary concerns – doing more with less
• Data loss prevention and information protection – protect, preserve and serve
• Environmental and business sustainment – green and economically efficient
• Maximize IT resource effectiveness and return on investment (ROI)
• Reduce total cost ownership (TCO) of IT resources and service delivery

The Backup and Backup Retention policy is an 11 page sample policy that is a complete policy which can be implemented immediately. 

The document is provided in both Word 2003 and Word 2007 format and is easily modified.  This policy is included in the Disaster Recovery / Business Continuity Template.

Below is a table from the policy:

Backing up data at remote offices has always been a challenge for IT administrators. Remote office backup schemes that rely on tape backup are expensive, time consuming to maintain, and often require technical expertise in remote offices that may not have on‐site IT staff. Network attached storage devices are high capacity, disk‐based storage appliances that can be easily deployed by employees with little technical expertise. The included client backup software, coupled with the built‐in backup and replication features  provides a backup framework that's cost‐effective to deploy, easy to maintain and can be configured to automatically backup data to remote offsite locations.