Several of you asked questions about my "too many backups" comment. OK, it IS perhaps a matter of interpretation, but ... decide that for yourself.
I was at the Navy Enterprise Data Center of New Orleans, from which I retired in 2016, so this story isn't recent and I wouldn't be surprised to find that some of the rules had changed in the last few years. On the other hand, I actually doubt that they have changed.
The issue of "too many backups" came about because of machine and software upgrades. When we started at the new NEDC-NO facility near the New Orleans lakefront area, we were a hosting center. Each machine was responsible for doing its own backups. As we grew from less than 2 dozen projects to 40, that became a LOT of tape drives. At some point we got an enterprise-level backup system. Everyone started backups through the enterprise system and we grew to over 80 projects - but now they were on the enterprise backup solution and all of those projects with their own backup now had the site backup instead. So their former backup cartridges were shelved in locked cabinets for data retention.
Time passed. In time, we realized we had backup tapes that were going to become unusable because after too many years, the individual machine backup drives were nearly inoperable, very often requiring a tech visit to repair them, and some of the cartridge drives were not fixable due to parts availability issues.
The time came, 10 years after the switch to the enterprise backups, that the old cartridges for individual system backups had become obsolete because they were nearly unreadable AND we had 10 years of enterprise-level backups. This was in the 2010 time frame, give or take a year. We had cabinets of unusable tape cartridges in individual backup formats. The tapes could not be transferred to other systems because the only software that could read the proprietary formats was on obsolete machines.. These were tapes that had been collecting dust in a controlled environment so you KNOW that they had been around way too long.
They were deemed "excess" and we went through the lengthy paperwork involved in destroying official government records. It took me and one of my assistant sys admins nearly a month to verify and catalog what we were destroying. It took so long because were required to verify tape content readability where possible (using cartridge drives on their last legs) and record each tape's analysis on a written form as part of the disposal accounting process - and we had over 700 tape cartridges
We were instructed to destroy them in the approved manner as described in the Federal Records Act. Which, oddly enough, indirectly acknowledges the possibility of having too many backups due to device obsolescence because we found provisions in that law for our exact situation. Congress had forseen - and provided for - having too many (obsolete) backups. Net result? We took the tapes downstairs to a little room next to shipping and receiving and ran all of the tapes through a degausser, then shipped the tapes to a shop licensed for government-approved records destruction.
Which is why I said, perhaps only partly joking, that Congress acknowledged you could have too many backups. If you add the word "obsolete" it might make more sense. But it spoils the joke.
.
