RE: Database Retention Question

This is where your legal team isn't doing their job.  

Part of the legal team's responsibility is to determine what is the appropriate retention period for your company's documents. Yes, if you divulge that you keep documents for all time, you can be forced to produce them under law and failure to do so can result in penalties or loss of your case if the judge deems your activities surrounding potential evidence to be spoliation of evidence (the intentional, reckless, or negligent withholding, hiding, altering, fabricating, or destroying of evidence relevant to a legal proceeding).  

The $50K for a converting a microfiche doc to a piece of paper is kind of crazy, since microfiche is no different than regular film and someone could have used one for the $100 film to digital usb attachments for your computer to read off the microfiche copy.

If you really wanted to be old school, as in a real Boy Scout, you could just shine a flashlight through the microfiche onto a wall and take a picture with your phone. J If you really want to stress your Bot Scout skills you would a magnifying on the other side of the microfiche to pretend to be a microfiche reader.  

Besides your legal team determining and you enforcing document retention, you have to be careful about are you really enforcing document retention. An example from other cases are

Say you have Symantec Netbackup and you expire tapes over time into your free pool to be reused by future backups. How long does that expired backup sit in the free pool before it reused? Under the law if the backup hasn't been overwritten you still have a copy that you could have been provided to the court.

Similarly you offsite tapes to Iron Mountain and they are pulled to be returned to you at the end of your Data retention time period, which normally means they not pulled until the last day of the end of the retention time period say 3 months. It is normally under regular Iron Mountain procedures that the pull, load on a truck and return to the client is 2-3 days for nonemergency retrieval. Once you receive them what is your policy for returning them to you tape pool or to be sent for destruction. As long as the tapes are not overwritten or not destroyed you still have a viable backup that could be served up to legal counsel as a piece of evidence.  

Technical points like these is normally why legal counsel or your CFO doesn't want the technical guys speaking with auditors or legal people, because we normally go into excruciating detail about all the steps that opens the doors to other problems.  

This statement "legal team who has made it clear that this is our problem and not theirs" is odd, as normally legal likes to ensure chain of custody and verification of unadulterated conversion, meaning they normally want to use standard service bureaus already used by the legal profession. (Yes after rolling on the floor for a few minutes, they would accept that camera picture of image on the wall as it is understandable and reproducible even for them just like taking a paper copy from some ones desk and running it through a scanner.)  

Dealing with legal cases is always painful if you don't have your processes down and agreed to by everyone. Sometimes when you have problems with legal you are dealing with the lower echelons of your legal department. I have always found it helpful to speak with your chief legal counsel who normally has a different perspective on the world.      

Matthew Parker

Chief Technologist

Dimensional DBA

425-891-7934 (cell)

D&B 047931344

CAGE 7J5S7 Dimensional.dba_at_comcast.net

 <http://www.linkedin.com/pub/matthew-parker/6/51b/944/> View Matthew Parker's profile on LinkedIn

www.dimensionaldba.com <http://www.dimensionaldba.com/>  

From: Scott Canaan [mailto:srcdco_at_rit.edu] Sent: Monday, May 1, 2017 7:40 AM
To: dimensional.dba_at_comcast.net; dmarc-noreply_at_freelists.org; oracle-l_at_freelists.org
Subject: RE: Database Retention Question  

There isn't a requirement that it be kept online, just kept and be able to be available within a relatively short period of time, which has not been defined either.  

As far as everything falling into someone else's area of concern, you are correct with the exception of the legal team who has made it clear that this is our problem and not theirs.  

An example that I was given was that there was a lawsuit a short while ago that required a purchase order from 30 years ago. Since we keep all POs forever, we had to produce it. It was found, on microfiche. We didn't have a working reader and the court didn't care. We still had to produce it. It ended up costing $50,000 to print that one piece of paper.  

Scott Canaan '88 (srcdco_at_rit.edu)

(585) 475-7886 - work (585) 339-8659 - cell

"Life is like a sewer, what you get out of it depends on what you put into it." - Tom Lehrer  

From: oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org [mailto:oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org] On Behalf Of Dimensional DBA
Sent: Monday, May 01, 2017 10:24 AM
To: Scott Canaan; dmarc-noreply_at_freelists.org; oracle-l_at_freelists.org Subject: RE: Database Retention Question  

I have a worked at a few companies that has mothballed complete systems including SW as you don't know if even the hardware will run the software any more depending on the OS you are running (AIX, HPUX, etc)  

This has been a standard problem since the Dec 2007 Supreme court ruling on evidence being available in its native electronic form.  

If your company isn't using one of the email programs that duplicate all email or haven't turned on MRM in MS Exchange then you may already be in violation of

"They insist we keep every version of every email because deleting any is considered "destroying evidence". "  

Compliance is fairly straight forward from a database perspective in you ensuring you have backups and that you test the backups. Everything else falls in someone else's area of concern such as the backup team, the email team and the legal team in reviewing processes to meet current to data compliance rules that morph over time based on ongoing court cases.  

Saving the VM images may be problematic also as the versions of the VMWare ops center moves upward not always being fully backwards compatible older images. Keeping a copy running can be problematic if something goes wrong and you have to rebuild and don't have all the components to do so.    

Normally there is no legal requirement to keep it online, that part is probably from your legal team, but in reality when you get to the keeping of all versions of the backups, you are not keeping a live version of the system at each backup point online only the last running version of the system.  

You can always take that last running backup of the system and continue to upgrade the database SW and the OS, so that you don't have worry about age out, but that doesn't help you with  

In some cases this is not a technical problem anymore. I have seen legal teams use programs to save off the email into single file pdf format instead of maintaining them in the original Email systems.        

Matthew Parker

Chief Technologist

Dimensional DBA

425-891-7934 (cell)

D&B 047931344

CAGE 7J5S7 Dimensional.dba_at_comcast.net

 <http://www.linkedin.com/pub/matthew-parker/6/51b/944/> View Matthew Parker's profile on LinkedIn

www.dimensionaldba.com <http://www.dimensionaldba.com/>  

From: oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org [mailto:oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org] On Behalf Of Scott Canaan
Sent: Monday, May 1, 2017 6:27 AM
To: dmarc-noreply_at_freelists.org; oracle-l_at_freelists.org Subject: RE: Database Retention Question  

True, but that's not my call.  

Scott Canaan '88 (srcdco_at_rit.edu)

(585) 475-7886 - work (585) 339-8659 - cell

"Life is like a sewer, what you get out of it depends on what you put into it." - Tom Lehrer  

From: oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org [mailto:oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org] On Behalf Of Reen, Elizabeth
Sent: Monday, May 01, 2017 9:24 AM
To: Scott Canaan; oracle-l_at_freelists.org Subject: RE: Database Retention Question  

            This is where calculating the cost of fighting it vs settling comes in. Sometimes settling is cheaper.  

Liz  

Elizabeth Reen
CPB Database Group Manager    

From: Scott Canaan [mailto:srcdco_at_rit.edu] Sent: Monday, May 01, 2017 9:19 AM
To: Reen, Elizabeth [ICG-IT]; oracle-l_at_freelists.org Subject: RE: Database Retention Question  

There is no pushing back on the lawyers. They insist we keep every version of every email because deleting any is considered "destroying evidence". They (and the courts) don't care about cost or technical issues. When they want the data, we have to supply it or get fined and, most likely, lose whatever case is against us. In this case the data being saved is the timekeeping system for hourly employees.  

Scott Canaan '88 (srcdco_at_rit.edu)

(585) 475-7886 - work (585) 339-8659 - cell

"Life is like a sewer, what you get out of it depends on what you put into it." - Tom Lehrer  

From: Reen, Elizabeth [mailto:elizabeth.reen_at_citi.com] Sent: Monday, May 01, 2017 9:16 AM
To: Scott Canaan; oracle-l_at_freelists.org Subject: RE: Database Retention Question  

Agreed, wish I had that option 10 years ago. Push back on the lawyers. Do they really need all of the backups or will a couple suffice. They tend to be very conservative about preserving evidence.  

Liz  

Elizabeth Reen
CPB Database Group Manager
718.248.9930 (Office)

Service Now Group: CPB-ORACLE-DB-SUPPORT    

From: Scott Canaan [mailto:srcdco_at_rit.edu] Sent: Monday, May 01, 2017 8:59 AM
To: Reen, Elizabeth [ICG-IT]; oracle-l_at_freelists.org Subject: RE: Database Retention Question  

This was one of the first things we thought of, however there are 28 backups to keep running (4 databases x 7 days each), which becomes unwieldly very quickly.  

What we are looking at doing is putting all 4 databases into one VM, then taking a VM snapshot of the entire environment, which gets us down to 7 snapshots to save and that way the O/S and Oracle software are also preserved with the databases. That's what I've gathered from the responses here is the best way to go.  

Scott Canaan '88 (srcdco_at_rit.edu)

(585) 475-7886 - work (585) 339-8659 - cell

"Life is like a sewer, what you get out of it depends on what you put into it." - Tom Lehrer  

From: Reen, Elizabeth [mailto:elizabeth.reen_at_citi.com] Sent: Friday, April 28, 2017 4:29 PM
To: Scott Canaan; oracle-l_at_freelists.org Subject: RE: Database Retention Question  

            What I have ended up doing is just keeping the copy on a database, upgrading and patching as needed. Expensive, yes. Data always available, yes. What you have to lose if you lose the case should dictate how you keep the data.  

Liz  

Elizabeth Reen
CPB Database Group Manager    

From: oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org [mailto:oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org] On Behalf Of Scott Canaan
Sent: Thursday, April 27, 2017 1:16 PM
To: oracle-l_at_freelists.org
Subject: Database Retention Question  

We are trying to find a workable solution to a rather large problem. One system has an Oracle database in Red Hat 6 and Oracle 11.2.0.4. Last August, there was a legal request to freeze 28 different backups of this database. That was done by the systems team, via CommVault (using RMAN). By asking more questions, it has come to light that any and / or all of those backups need to be quickly accessible as Oracle databases until Aug. 31, 2023. When I mentioned to our legal department that there's no way that I can guarantee that whatever version of Oracle we'll be using in 5, 6, 7 years will be able to even open the database files, the response was "you have to guarantee that the data is available if required in a lawsuit. No excuses are accepted by the courts.".  

We've toyed with a couple of possible options. One is to keep a Red Hat 6 / Oracle 11.2.0.4 environment running until Sept. 1, 2023, which the SAs hate
(not to mention the Security Office). Another is to restore from backup and
upgrade along with other database upgrades and take a new frozen backup, which we aren't keen on doing 28 times.  

Does anyone have any other ideas on how to save these backups and guarantee that they are usable through Aug. 31, 2023? I'd appreciate any thoughts.  

Thank you,  

Scott Canaan '88 (srcdco_at_rit.edu)

(585) 475-7886 - work (585) 339-8659 - cell

"Life is like a sewer, what you get out of it depends on what you put into it." - Tom Lehrer  

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