The purpose of this policy is to define what digital data is backed up onto LTO4 tape media. The policy will address how long the backups are retained and the procedure for overwriting or destroying out of date media. The policy is enforced programmatically using Veritas BackupExec, Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service, and physical movement of backup media.

Faculty and Staff directories are backed up according to the schedule defined by a BackupExec policy. Media sets are defined by daily incremental and full backup. The daily incremental backups are run on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. The tapes are overwritten when full. The full backup runs each Sunday. Media are overwrite protected for two weeks and are appendable for 16 days. The final Sunday full backup in June is pulled from the rotation and archived for 3 years.

Shadow copies of the Faculty and Staff directories are taken at 12:00 P.M. and 5:00 P.M. every day. These snapshots allow a client to retrieve previous versions of documents. The client must have the Volume Shadow Copy service enabled on their workstation to recover previous versions of documents. The shadow copy backup is written to a drive with a capacity of 21 GB. Shadow copies are overwritten once the capacity is reached.

The Microsoft Exchange databases are backed up on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Components necessary for disaster recovery are backed up. Individual mailboxes and messages can be recovered if not overwritten.  Media are overwrite protected for 4 weeks and are appendable for 30 days. Items in the Deleted Items and Junk E-mail folders are retained for 14 days before being deleted.

Old or damaged tapes are turned over to the Enterprise Technology Services Computer Hard Drive Collection and Destruction Program.