What are reccomended/best practices for Backup-to-Disk .bkf files?

HI all,

We have moved a client running SBS 2003 from tape backup to RAID disk storage for their backups.

Running BackupExec 12.x and backing up ~25GB data and ~10GB Exchange server  (brick-level backup).

Currently, I want two weeks of iteration. That will leave me with 14 ~10GB IMGxxxxxx folders and a .bkf image that will be anywhere from ~125-150GB. The data backups are incremental.

Here are my  general questions, all answers greatly appreciated:

is it better to split the daily backups into different images, is there an upper limit for how big the .bkf file can get and do I actually need the 14 days of exchange backups, given that I can recover deleted mail from the server for 30 days (or more) anyway?

TIA,

It is indeed better to use multiple bkf files - especially if you want to retain data backups for 2 weeks (I suppose that's what you mean with iteration).
A bkf file is like a tape. You can append to it, so it can keep growing in size. But when you reuse it (i.e. you let Backup Exec overwrite it), all the data is lost - even the backup you appended the night before.

So your best option is to have a bkf file for every cycle of full and incremental backups you want to keep (possibly 2 - if I understood your setup correctly). You do an overwrite operation during the full backup - you append to the bkf file for all the subsequent  incremental backups.

Specify the "maximum size" of the bkf file to be the amount of space you'll need for full and all incr + 40% for future growth. Use the pre-allocate checkbox to preallocate that space and thus avoid fragmentation.

You mention brick level backups - are you saying you are selecting the "Microsoft Exchange Mailboxes" section in the BE selection tree? I suggest you don't use this and use GRT instead. GRT is what creates the IMG files when you make an Information Store backup, so you're probably using it already.

And you're right that keeping 2 weeks of Exchange backups to restore mail messages is useless if you have deleted item retention of 30 days.