Backup best practices
Hey all,
I wanted to ask a few questions as I'm trying to come up with a data retention policy for our SCCM system. We've all agreed that we'll be using the site maintenance backup task to back up the SQL Servers at the central and primary levels. My questions are as follows:
1. If data is purged from the primary servers, will it be retained in the central server?
2. Do the summary tasks, if enabled, cause the loss of detail data when it rolls the data up to an aggregate?
3. What's the standard for keeping data on hardware inventory, software inventory, and software usage generally?
4. What's the best method to purge old data out of the SCCM system.
Thanks for the help, I hope these questions aren't too silly, I'm acting as PM on this project and I have to at least take a first stab at these!
Brian
Answers
I'm afraid you are not going to like the answers, but I'll offer some thoughts for you:
1. If data is purged from the primary servers, will it be retained in the central server?
*** Not necessarily. Data that is deleted from a child site's database doesn't always get immediately removed from the parent site database. Deletion of discovery data can trickle up the hierarchy if enabled. However, as a general rule, the data would remain in the parent site database until removed by that site's maintenance tasks.
2. Do the summary tasks, if enabled, cause the loss of detail data when it rolls the data up to an aggregate?
*** Yes. For example, the software metering summarization tasks are meant to remove detailed data to help reduce the amount of data in the database (to prevent the database from growing too large too quickly).
3. What's the standard for keeping data on hardware inventory, software inventory, and software usage generally?
*** There isn't really one. We set the defaults to the values we think are fairly common or make sense. However, each environment will make its own decision on how much data it needs to maintain. So this is certainly one of those "it depends" answers that people don't always like to hear - but we can't give more definitive answers to.
4. What's the best method to purge old data out of the SCCM system.
*** The site maintenance tasks. You should NEVER add, modify, or delete data directly from the database by going into SQL tools. Let us do that by how you've configured the maintenance tasks. Or by deleting from our Configuration Manager Console - that works also.
All Replies
I'm afraid you are not going to like the answers, but I'll offer some thoughts for you:
1. If data is purged from the primary servers, will it be retained in the central server?
*** Not necessarily. Data that is deleted from a child site's database doesn't always get immediately removed from the parent site database. Deletion of discovery data can trickle up the hierarchy if enabled. However, as a general rule, the data would remain in the parent site database until removed by that site's maintenance tasks.
2. Do the summary tasks, if enabled, cause the loss of detail data when it rolls the data up to an aggregate?
*** Yes. For example, the software metering summarization tasks are meant to remove detailed data to help reduce the amount of data in the database (to prevent the database from growing too large too quickly).
3. What's the standard for keeping data on hardware inventory, software inventory, and software usage generally?
*** There isn't really one. We set the defaults to the values we think are fairly common or make sense. However, each environment will make its own decision on how much data it needs to maintain. So this is certainly one of those "it depends" answers that people don't always like to hear - but we can't give more definitive answers to.
4. What's the best method to purge old data out of the SCCM system.
*** The site maintenance tasks. You should NEVER add, modify, or delete data directly from the database by going into SQL tools. Let us do that by how you've configured the maintenance tasks. Or by deleting from our Configuration Manager Console - that works also.Thanks Wally,
I'd rather get answers I don't like than guess and be wrong!
