Your backup ideas please...

[Ben_Stanton]

Hi guys,

Just got a new toy out of the box - HP Storageworks G2 Autoloader...

My predecessor purchased it before my arrival and to be honest, I think it's a bit of an overkill. It's an 8 tape robotic library...200GB tapes!

So my question is this - how would you backup the following giving maximum use and getting most resilience;

Server1 - user_data drive 110GB+
Server2 - public_data drive 140GB+
Server3 - exchange_2007
Server4 - sharepoint_2007

Please give your thoughts on backup methods etc etc

Thanks in advance

Ben

[dhicks]

Please give your thoughts on backup methods etc etc

Is it too late to send the fancy tape drive back, or could you perhaps sell it on eBay? I figure backing up to caddied SATA harddrives is the way to go.

--
David Hicks

[Ben_Stanton]

Well...it looks so pretty in the rack now. If I take it out again, there will be a little 1u space - yuk

Although - if the budget gets a bit low - ebay here I come!

[torledo]

Is it too late to send the fancy tape drive back, or could you perhaps sell it on eBay? I figure backing up to caddied SATA harddrives is the way to go.

--
David Hicks

Why the hell would he want to send it back ??? Caddied SATA drives are definitely NOT the way to go for offsite storage.

There are numerous backup options, the most obvious is to connect the loader to a dedicated backup media server with backup server clients installed on the other servers...backup streams from the various servers are then sent over the network to the media server which controls the loader...data streams from the clients can be sent over a dedicated backup VLAN if server adapters support 802.1q (which they should) - or you could use dedicated network adapters for backup purposes connected to a dedicated switch - this would minimise the impact of backing up over the network. In schools that's not necessarily a requirement as backup windows are typically done during the evening but in industry backup times are continually shrinking due to extended times of business and the huge volume of data - so dedicated backup paths are a must.

This is a very effective way of doing centralised backup on a budget and allows you to use 1 and 2U servers without local backup drives. In you're case the G2 will have no problems backing up a handful of servers.

[meastaugh1]

Why the hell would he want to send it back ??? Caddied SATA drives are definitely NOT the way to go for offsite storage.

There are numerous backup options, the most obvious is to connect the loader to a dedicated backup media server with backup server clients installed on the other servers...backup streams from the various servers are then sent over the network to the media server which controls the loader...data streams from the clients can be sent over a dedicated backup VLAN if server adapters support 802.1q (which they should) - or you could use dedicated network adapters for backup purposes connected to a dedicated switch - this would minimise the impact of backing up over the network. In schools that's not necessarily a requirement as backup windows are typically done during the evening but in industry backup times are continually shrinking due to extended times of business and the huge volume of data - so dedicated backup paths are a must.

This is a very effective way of doing centralised backup on a budget and allows you to use 1 and 2U servers without local backup drives. In you're case the G2 will have no problems backing up a handful of servers.

That's what we do here. A 16 tape autoloader connected to a backup server with Symantec BackupExec 10 installed. All other servers backup to this. Works well for the most part.

[dhicks]

Why the hell would he want to send it back ??? Caddied SATA drives are definitely NOT the way to go for offsite storage.

But they're so cheap! One of those 8-tape robots costs around £3000, plus extra for tapes and license fees for software to run it. Tapes are limited to 200GB each. a 1TB harddrive costs around £200 and can handle random access for running stuff like rsync for backup.

--
David Hicks