Recommendations

Have a local backup drive and store all backups on it. Copy the backups to a remote or removable medium. This has the advantage of all backups being available locally for quick and easy restore but also available off site in the event of a disaster.

Encrypt all backups for security.

For backups other than transaction log backups, consider using the compression option when backing up to make it easier to transfer the backup files.

The system for remote or removable medium backup does not have to treat database backups differently than any other files.

Removable backup media should be moved to a safe offsite storage location and regularly rotated back in, ideally following well-established procedures for other valuable plant data.

Use transaction log backups where appropriate and transferred to backup media at the same frequency as the backup. If you only transfer to backup media on a daily basis, then you need to be aware that under a disaster scenario the transaction log backups would not be available.

You might consider backing up the transaction log directly to the backup media.

For most situations, daily complete backups and hourly differential backups is sufficent. In this case, use the Simple Recovery Model.

If you use the Full Recovery Model, make sure you schedule transaction log backups so your transaction log does not continually grow. In this context, a good strategy is daily full backups, hourly differential backups, and 10-minute transaction log backups.