Server Backup

[BatchFile]

I just wondered what others out there did with regard to offsite server backups. Currently we're using a set of USB Hard drives - one set offsite and the other plugged in to the servers - swapped twice a week. There's also various other backups taken daily and stored on a couple of servers built with extra storage for the task.

The USB drives are getting full and need replacing; I was just wondering what the alternatives were, pros and cons of them and what they approximately cost.

I need to back up:

Application server (DC) @ 140Gb
file server 1 @ 280GB
file server 2 @ 260GB
finance server @ 150GB
Sims / Staff server @ 470GB

My knowledge is out of date in this area; Is tape still an option? or is there a better way?

[elsiegee40]

You'll get all opinions on this - we are a very small school on large site that has 4 separate buildings far enough apart for a major disaster in one not building to affect the others.

I dumped tape a couple of years ago, because the regular replacement of tapes cost an arm and a leg and because the tape drive failed.

After much consideration on risk, we decided to back up to networked hard-drive which stays on site... Geographically as far away from the server as possible (and it's quite a hike) and in a secure location within the building. Electricity supplies are also separate.

In the end, for us (and it may not work for other schools), it has ended up as a simple no fuss, low-cost solution. Should the server-building be destroyed and the backup building go too... most of this part of town would have gone, including my own house!

[Gibbo]

I'd be wary of USB drives. They did that here once and off-the-shelf stuff just isn't that reliable for day to day transportation and plugging and unplugging. Result - lost data.

I'll always go for tape drives. Providing they're looked after and tapes replaced they'll give you plenty of life.

Couple that with a NAS box somewhere else in school with a daily ROBOCOPY batch file and you'll be sorted.

[BatchFile]

You'll get all opinions on this - we are a very small school on large site that has 4 separate buildings far enough apart for a major disaster in one not building to affect the others.

I dumped tape a couple of years ago, because the regular replacement of tapes cost and and a leg and because the tape drive failed.

After much consideration on risk, we decided to back up to networked hard-drive which stays on site... Geographically as far away from the server as possible (and it's quite a hike) and in a secure location within the building. Electricty supplies are also separate.

In the end, for us (and it mat not work for other schools), it has ended up as a simple no fuss, low-cost solution. Should the server-building be destroyed and the backup building go too... most of this part of town would have gone, including my own house!

I was just reading your thread from a couple of years ago as it happens

Big box (6.5TB (to hold 5xtotal network capacity)) at the opposite end of school, or proper offsite backup that I take home with me.... interesting

[steveg]

We use usb hard disks for our backups, 1 500gig and 1 250gig per day is enough for us. We have a week's set of each, and then 4 which we swap with the Wednesday disks to give us up to a month we can go back. We store all of these on site in a 2 hours data fire proof safe at the oposite end of the building to the servers.

Because each drive is only being used once a week, they all seem to have lasted fine (only 1 failure since we switched to hard disks over 3 years ago)

We also use a cheap 1gb NAS that has the sims and FMS databases encypted and copied to it 3 times a day during a normal day, so in theory we should never loose more than 3 hours of sims data, or 1 day of anything else.

Steve

[soapyfish]

I have all all 4 Domian controllers (hooked up to a SAN) copy their data to a staging server over night. The staging server then pushes the data to a locally attached LTO 4 autoloader during the following day so the tapes can be taken off site that evening.

We do a differential backup during the week being Mon,Tues,Wed,Thurs, then on a Friday we do a full backup of all servers and.

The purpose of the tapes Is really just for a catastrophic failure, earthquake, metor shower, theft etc.
We use the staging server to restore files lost or deleted as its much much faster than tape.

[NickK]

The sheer amount of data will stop you from backing it all up completely off site.

I have a NAS box in a building separate from the main building where the server room is for the bulk of user data, Server system states etc. This is adequate for our needs as it highly unlikely to lose both buildings. We also have tape backups of each server.

The more critical data i.e SIMS & Finance Databases etc (5Gb in all) is backed-up off site every night via online backup. I use SDSL's backup services: safedatastorage.co.uk Online Backup - Safe Data Storage Limited[/url] Have found them reliable and very helpful with reasonable pricing.

Hope this helps!

[timzim]

The purpose of the tapes Is really just for a catastrophic failure, earthquake, metor shower, theft etc.

I like the way you place meteor shower before theft. Is that because you work in an area with a very low crime rate or with a very high meteor shower rate?

[soapyfish]

Low Crime rate
Unknown metor shower rate

besides you cant say if only we had everthing off site AFTER the metor storm hits !

[Edu-IT]

We use Tanderg RDX removable disks. Full backup on a Friday, differential on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. We then do a monthly full backup which we retain for a few months.

[coquet636]

Sorry to hijack into this thread but we "used" backupexec 10 and my disk is lost, have the certificates for licences so i was going to just download the software from somewhere and install.

But.

I was wondering what other software use and price before i do this as have found that backupexec didnt backup to our NAS very well.

Any suggestions would be welcomed

[Duke]

Backup Exec doesn't handle our SAN/NAS particularly well either. For what it's worth, we use Backup Exec 10d here to cover file servers, SQL, Exchange, SIMS, AD, everything. It's not a great product but it's done the job for years, and once we move to VMware I won't have to use it for DR/Bare Metal which will be a relief.

Full backup on weekend to tape > tapes to elsewhere on site in a fireproof safe
Full backup on weekend to disk (FAS2020 via iSCSI)
Daily differential backup to disk (FAS2020 via iSCSI)

This gives me usable media if the server room goes up in flames and takes the FAS2020 with it, and the D2D backups give me instantly-accessible quick restores if someone deletes a file.

There's lots of different ways of doing things, my preferred option would be two mirrored SANs holding virtual images of servers and user data, they would be doing multiple snapshots each day, and would be sending data to somewhere else on site via NDMP to tape or VTL.

Cheers,
Chris

[soapyfish]

Sorry to hijack into this thread but we "used" backupexec 10 and my disk is lost, have the certificates for licences so i was going to just download the software from somewhere and install.

But.

I was wondering what other software use and price before i do this as have found that backupexec didnt backup to our NAS very well.

Any suggestions would be welcomed

I updated to 12.5 when we got our SAN and it worked fine from the start