One of the most important parts of a document management system is the backup. Often this critical piece of your system is overlooked. This is sometimes because backup processes can be confusing. To help you understand your backup better we will review your backup. This is not intended to train you on every version of backup software, but provide a guide of things you can look at or consider.

One of the most common daily tasks you should be doing is checking that your backup did indeed run successfully. To do this you will want to open your backup software and look for a Monitor or Job Monitor tab. Click on that tab and look at the job history. You should see that the backup job ran as scheduled and was completed successfully. Also look at the byte count. Each day you should see the byte count increase as you add more information to your server. If the count drops suddenly or goes up suddenly without an explanation this would indicate a problem that needs to be looked at.

Sometimes jobs fail and you can tell this because they are usually displayed in Red. This is normal and it happens for many different reasons. If you have a backup job that fails do not panic. You need to determine why the job failed. If you double click on the job you can look at the job history and the job log. I like to look at the job log first. At the bottom of the job log you should see a section called "Errors". The reason that the job failed will be listed. The messages are sometimes a little cryptic but as you review them over time they will start to make some sense. Some of the common errors would be "Failed to load media" This would indicate that there was no tape in the drive, or "CRC Error Writing to media" this usually means that you have a bad tape or that the tape drive needs cleaning. Having an error in the backup for one or two days should not stop you from working. The backup job should be set to do a complete system backup each night, so the next time a backup runs it will backup everything. If your backup fails for more than one or two days you should contact support for assistance to correct this problem.

What should we back up is a common question. The best answer is everything. You should backup all the drives in the server and the system state. This will allow your system to be restored completely if ever needed. You should review what is being backed up by your backup jobs. To do this click on the jobs tab and find your job. Double click on the job and it will open in a properties window. Choose the option to display the backup selections. This will show you the drives in the server that are being backed up as well as any special items like the system state. Remember this is your data, and you need to make sure that it is being correctly backed up. If you have questions or do not think that everything is being backed up correctly contact support for assistance.

The Tape is still one of the most common forms of backup media. Tape is not the best option although sometimes it is really the only option available. When backing up to a tape remember that tapes do go bad. If your job always fails using the same tape, it is a good indication that the tape is bad and needs to be replaced. Tapes will usually have a shelf life of 1-2 years depending on your environment. If your tapes are more than two years old it is probably a good idea to replace them. Tape drives also become dirty. Your system should have a cleaning tape. This tape can only be used a specific number of times. The label on the tape will indicate the maximum times that a cleaning tape should be used in a tape drive. Mark off one box on the label each time your cleaning tape is used. When the tape is used up, replace it. You should clean your drive at least once a week. Clean it more often when you start having errors. If you are using removable drives you do not have these problems.

Next time we will discuss how to protect our offsite backup media, and how to test your backup.