We are adding some storage to our SAN and the question was asked why do we need additional disk storage for backups in addition to the file storage. Valid question, one to which I normally answer with best practices to back up to disk and duplicate to tape. Though, technically there is nothing stopping me from going directly to tape.
That being said, we send all tapes off site once a day. If I would send a full backup off site, would I still be able to run a differential without it on site? I am using BE 2014 SP1. The backups would be agent based file level backups of Windows Server 2012 Standard. Right now I back up using modified time for these types, but not sure if archive bit or catalog based would help in this situation.
I may be able to sway to the side of sending Full backups off site and keeping diffs on site. Does anyone know if I can restore from a Diff on disk if the full backup is not available. Again, for VMWare GRT AVVI backups and restore, I normally need both full and diff, but for differential agent based file backups, I think I might be able to restore just from the diff.