I was wondering if there was a general consensus on how long to keep system state backups.

I am trying to reevaluate our current backup process, and trying to get a good handle on our current storage requirements. Our current setup involves tapes and sending backups offsite with Barracuda Networks. We have been doing our system state backups with Barracuda now, which does full backups daily, leaving our storage requirements growing quite quickly.

My boss is a little too gung-ho with backups and wants our system states saved for quite a while. We currently have 5 days of nightlies, 5 weeklies, 3 monthlies, and so on. I think this is quite overkill for system state backups. My boss wants the ability to go back in time to find when an issue appeared, but I don't think that is practical. Many things change in the course of several months. I also think it would be hard not to notice problems with our DCs and other servers for several months.

I would think that a previous week's snapshot and the current week's dailies would suffice.

Any advice or reading you can point me to?

Thanks!