Few questions on Backups for warehouse

I am starting to load a data warehouse for a retention period of 10 years. My database backup plan is as follows -

1. Perform full back on Sunday.
2. Perform differential backup everyday from Mon - Sat.
3. Perform transaction log back-ups every hour on all days.

My recovery mode is going to be BULK-LOGGED at all times. I had a few questions / comments on the Maintenance Plan that I would be creating for the back-ups. My database name is Warehouse.

1. Differential Backups cannot be created via a Maintenance Plan. Only a full-backup gets created. Am I correct?

2. I shall be running Optimizations and Integrity checks prior to full-backup. Is this ok?

3. Remove files (both .BAK and .TRN) older than - I am thinking of having 6 days. I want only one full back-up at a time in the server. What settings can I use? I think the old back-up gets deleted when the new one is successful. What settings in the Maintainence Plan do I have to use to overwrite the previous back-up with the current one?

System Databases -

Should the settings for System Databases be the same as my Warehouse database?

The Maintenance Plan takes care of full-back up and TLOG back-ups. For Differential Backups I have to use the All Tasks from EM and specify the Differential Backup job. Correct?

All kinds of back-ups can occur in the database when it is active. Meaning, I have a job that loads data in the warehouse when a back-up is occurring simultaneously. Am I correct?

I do not intend to shrink the Transaction Log at any time, since it gets backed up every hour I do not expect it to grow to a large size. If I do have to shrink it, then I change the recover mode to Simple, shrink the log and then immediately do a full-backup and after that set the mode back to Bulk-Logged. Is the sequence of steps correct?

Please let me know your inputs.

Thanks,

Vivek1. Incorrect. Please refer to BOL.

2. Sure it's okay. It can be resource intensive so you may consider running during non-peak hours. Also, you should always run DBCC CHECKDB before a backup and if possible, after a backup completes. the sooner you find a problem, the better.

3. Delete all tran and diff backups after a successful full backup completes and has been written to another media (secondary copy) such as tape

IF YOU ARE RUNNING TRAN LOG BACKUPS, YOUR TRAN LOG GETS AUTOMATICALLY TRUNCATED. IN ANY CASE, YOU ARE RUNNING IN BULK MODEL. YOU REALLY SHOULD READ BOL.