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We're toying the idea of implementing a D2D2T backup, and I was wondering what offerings in that area other people used. We're not after anything too fancy, nor are we looking to back up huge volumes of data (~100GB).
Thoughts, comments, suggestions, warnings all welcome...
Why not Disk > Disk > Offline storage at another school backed up via your internet connection? especially if its small backups like that :).
Why go with the extra step of tape as well?
I need to look at my current nas setup for next year.
I am thinking of something similar to what we do but a nas or other device in the server room either at night or continuous throughout the day and then onto a nas the other side of the site as we do now.
Ben
@greenfieldsupport - not so easy for an indy school like us, also I have mentioned online backups before and never got very far with the idea.
@plexer - tapes can be taken offsite, so in the event of serious fire, data would still be recoverable. Infrastructure permitting, we could (as you suggest) just put a NAS elsewhere on site, though. That said, I'm not sure if we could actually get it far enough away, as the site is quite small.
Nick just been quoted for SAN backup solution transfer speeds of 120Gb per hour D2D2tape so i can take them offsite how much?
Guess? closest wins!
We used to use Disk to Disk to Tape using a dedicated server and Retrospect 7.0
Was awful.
Used to take so long to do the backup that it couldn't complete in one night doing everything we wanted.
So we cut out some stuff.
Then because it would backup the data to disk overnight then copy that backup to tape all day, if you wanted to restore something you couldn't because the Backupset was always in use.
Why do you want to do it this way?
@mrforgetful - good point regarding the issues of doing restores, hadn't thought of that. The reasoning behind doing it is mainly as an extra layer of defence in case we have issues with the tapes, also it would serve as a backup on days when I'm not here to change tapes.
I don't even bother with nightly backups anymore.
As far as I'm concerned Shadow Copies are good enough for day to day backups. If it's something serious enough to need my offsite backup I'm sure there'll be bigger things on people mind than needing to catch up on a weeks work.
Not a bad idea - some sort of remote site replication using an internet connection for relatively small backup size requirements. Wouldn't recommend it if both sites didn't have symmetrical bandwith and a suitably fat pipe - ideally 10meg LES so that would favour a private line rather than transporting it via the internet. Ofcourse D2D2T is perfect if you don't have a remote site or another school who'd be willing to work with you. But effectiveness of different D2D2T implementations differ wildly - the best solution is for your disk array or device to emulate a tape library (VTL) you stage your backups to the array and can restore directly from disk and offload to tape - in answer to another posters comment ideally you should have tape in the chain for offsite and archival storage. Ofcourse if you have got remote replication facility your disk arrays can do archiving and your remote storage can handle offsite storage. Voila.Quote:
Originally Posted by greenfieldsupport
Most large companies still use tape a LOT.
The VTL approach is VERY different to how most schools do D2D - they tend to use rsync or similar tools to backup from disk to disk (cheap and simple) VTL's allows you many many more options and are a much better
way if you need to do D2D2T - it's just a hell of a lot more intuitive.
LEA managed WAN's are perfect for backup applications - particularly leased line or mpls vpn based WAN's. LEA's can backup school servers to terabytes of SAN based storage quickly and cheaply....
Obviously requires careful planning by all involved.
couple of questions;Quote:
Originally Posted by bossman
is it for an existing SAN ?
if so, what arrays are you using and what additional components (including software) are they quoting you for ?
If you can let us know i can get very close to guessing how much their quoting you ?
Particularly if they've used the works VTL, CDP and de-dupe in their sales pitch.
By which you mean files getting copied across to another server immediately, right? That would be an even better option, and I could then back that up daily/weekly. How have you got that set up?Quote:
Originally Posted by mrforgetful
> We're toying the idea of implementing a D2D2T backup, and I was
> wondering what offerings in that area other people used.
My own Perl script that transfers files from individual servers to a central backup server via HTTP. Only transfers files that have been changed. The filesystem on the backup server uses hard links to maintain "copies" of the filesystem, so you can go back and see what the filesystem looked like a number of days/weeks/months ago. I plan to mount the backed-up copy of each user's file area as a (read-only) drive on their Windows PC, letting them restore stuff from backup without having to ask me.
--
David Hicks
We backup from servers to a NAS LaCie drive (A) every week, and then take all them backups to another LaCie (B) on the other side of site at the end of the month. 4 weekly backups, then push it to another location for the months worth.
Using 300Gb of a 500Gb drive at current, and thats backing up last years staff and students untill christmas when we put it onto our third backup drive (C) that contains leaver data for 3 years before being destroyed.
(A) 1 Week Cycle, Automatic
(B) 1 Month Cycle, Automatic
(C) Manual Yearly Process
Done on Friday Night / Sat Morning (1am), and the Monthls on a Sat Night / Sunday Morning. All going over Fibre to the quieter switches on site.
I just mean for day to day recovery Shadow Copies do all I need to do, after all 99% of recoveries are accidentally deleted work, saves over files they didn't want to etc.Quote:
Originally Posted by NickJones
I don't do anything on a day to day basis except have Shadow Copies turned on.
On a Friday night the entire contents of every drive is copied to external USB HDDs. Take it home on a Monday rotational with another set.
@mrforgetful: I can understand your view on day to day user files and I agree but backups is more than that.
currently I do a disk > disk > tape but not in the traditional sense:
I have a 1TB NAS (A) that has all the users files on it which gets backed up on a weekly basis to a 2TB NAS(B) (200Gb Backup) which gets held over a 4 week period. At the end of the 4 weeks a 300Gb Monthly backup to tape is done from the last week of the weekly cycle.
On top of this I have another 2TB NAS(C) which has my exchange backups going to it, my daily ASR backups of my DC's, and my system state backups for my other servers going to it. These daily backups amount to nearly 100GB and rotate on a monthly basis with a monthly backup going direct to NAS(B) to be caught on tape.
Backup is not just user files but DR should be included in it also hence why the backups are big but it does mean in the event of a failure all is good.