We use Symantec backup exec 12. We don't feel it is necessary to backup the system state nightly. We are opting to back it up monthly or if system changes are made.
I have read articles on what exactly the system state back's up. From my understanding so far, even with the system state, one still needs to backup their whole C: drive and any other drive on the system to be able to perform a system restore.
We are backing up multiple servers to a compress 800gb tape. The question is, now we opted to only backup up the system state monthly, which saves us 80gb's per full backup, is it your opinion do we need to continue to backup the full C: drive nightly?
Note: We do a Weekly master and nightly incremental. The reason this question arises is that we hold out the weekly master, then a monthly returning the previous week into rotation, hold monthly until the year end is performed and then year end is saved for good and each month will eventually go back into rotation. Blah Blah I am rambling. Currently we are on two tapes per full backup. We were trying to get down to 1 tape, for convenience, but want to do the backups RIGHT!
What have other admins found as best practice?
Best Answer
Keep in mind that the System State includes the Registry. Whether anything changes the registry will depend on your server and the services installed. If any of those service definitions reside in the registry and the settings change, you will need to update the System State backup after any of those service definitions changes.