Backup soloution, am i going back to the dark ages.

[Tech-head]

Ok so the school im currently at is using symantec system recovery to back up 3 servers, great a digital soloution but there is a part of me that would rather use a tape system for backups, am i just "not with the times". what are everyones thoughts on this? also would running both be overkill?

[Norphy]

Is Symantec System Recovery a cloud solution? If not, I'd suggest backup up to tape as well as to disk. At least then you've got a separate backup should the disk array go pear shaped and you can keep the backups away from your server and/or site too.

 

Tapes aren't old fashioned, realistically they're the most practical and economical and fastest way of backing up a large amount of data which can be transported away from your site or put into a fireproof safe.

[Modey]

I'd say tape is still one of the most effective solutions when it comes to long term archiving and backup of your data. When you combine it with something like Data Protection Manager I think it can work really well.

[Dos_Box]

Do you have any kind of 'removable' backups that are stored securely and in a separate location?

[X-13]

Is Symantec System Recovery a cloud solution?

 

If it is, I would question whether having to depend on if an external company exists or not just to access your backups is really the best option.

[ht6]

And remember that fire proof safes are exactly that. Fire proof. Not necessarily 'heat' proof, and we all remember what happens when we put a crisp packet in the oven....

[Tech-head]

It's not a cloud based soloution it backs up to two seperate NAS drives in seperate blocks. The reason im questioning this is the spare NAS recently went down so looking for a fail safe should one or both of the key NAS drives go down and the automated backup soloution can't run. Now i have my budget for the year looks like a tape system is about to be my second purchase after the mandatory licensing. Thanks for all your support people.

[plexer]

And remember that fire proof safes are exactly that. Fire proof. Not necessarily 'heat' proof, and we all remember what happens when we put a crisp packet in the oven....

 

Anybody using a fireproof safe to store media would have bought when that was rated for what they were storing and this suitable for purpose.

 

Ben

[ht6]

Anybody using a fireproof safe to store media would have bought when that was rated for what they were storing and this suitable for purpose.

 

Ben

 

I think it would be wrong to presume that would be the case everywhere.

[FragglePete]

I've implemented a new BackUp server within the last six months. New server with a ton of disk space; backup to Disk and then duplicate to Tape, in our case using a HP 1/8 LTO-5 Tape Library. I too like having an offline storage solution where the tapes are put into a Fire Proof safe down the other end of the School. (Will be in another building when we get our new Sixth form).

 

So far, so good. Taken a while to get my head around BackUp Exec 2012 as it's vastly different from earlier versions. Restoring from Disk takes seconds now and should only need to rummage to Tapes for really old stuff.

 

Pete

[Gibson335]

I think it would be wrong to presume that would be the case everywhere.

 

I think the thing here is to ensure that the safe is not located in the same building as your backup device(s).

[Gibson335]

I've implemented a new BackUp server within the last six months. New server with a ton of disk space; backup to Disk and then duplicate to Tape, in our case using a HP 1/8 LTO-5 Tape Library. I too like having an offline storage solution where the tapes are put into a Fire Proof safe down the other end of the School. (Will be in another building when we get our new Sixth form).

 

So far, so good. Taken a while to get my head around BackUp Exec 2012 as it's vastly different from earlier versions. Restoring from Disk takes seconds now and should only need to rummage to Tapes for really old stuff.

 

Pete

 

Do you use VSC for user data restores? Our backups now are considered to be for emergency use only.

[Modey]

And remember that fire proof safes are exactly that. Fire proof. Not necessarily 'heat' proof, and we all remember what happens when we put a crisp packet in the oven....

 

Most data safes are rated to an amount of time. Ours is rated to two hours before the heat would destroy our tapes inside. If a fire was burning for that long I thing you'd have other significant issues as well as data loss though.

[FragglePete]

No, we use something else called RestoreSure; it monitors their home drives and replicates any changes to another Server we have here. It's something that was in place when I got here, part of our CSE installation and we've just kept it as it works well.

 

Pete

[Modey]

Just to give the OP an idea, we recently spent just under 6K on our backup solution. That was a Dell server with an 18TB disk array and also a single LTO5 tape backup system. The extra disk capacity was really to work in conjunction with DPM as it's quite space hungry.

[Gibson335]

No, we use something else called RestoreSure; it monitors their home drives and replicates any changes to another Server we have here. It's something that was in place when I got here, part of our CSE installation and we've just kept it as it works well.

 

Pete

 

Ah yes, we had that when we were with CSE.

[FragglePete]

Ah yes, we had that when we were with CSE.

 

It's more of a seperate product now, as I had to buy a seperate licence to use it on 64Bit. Offers Cloud backup of user areas now but that's something we've not really used. If we were to move away from CSE its something I would keep.

 

Pete

[glennda]

I recommend always backup to disk and then possibly tape on site but always syncing data out to the cloud in some form or another.

[zag]

Just put a box in another building, backup to disk.

[DMcCoy]

How are people with disk only managing to meet their various retention requirements? I started keeping monthly tapes going back several years.

[Gibson335]

How are people with disk only managing to meet their various retention requirements? I started keeping monthly tapes going back several years.

 

Do you know what those precise requirements are? I've yet to track down a document or site that provides a specific set of requirements, and would love to find one that does more than 'suggest' or 'imply'.

[DMcCoy]

Do you know what those precise requirements are? I've yet to track down a document or site that provides a specific set of requirements, and would love to find one that does more than 'suggest' or 'imply'.

 

Most seem to be a amalgamation of the individual areas, although financial records will be the ones with the clearest retention regulations.

[DMcCoy]

A little off topic

 

https://www.watsonhall.com/resources/downloads/paper-uk-data-retention-requirements.pdf looks quite good, even for the references at the end for relevant regulations.

 

Back on topic, LTO4 (and later) have been great for backups especially with the hardware encryption. Sadly DPM can't use HW tape encryption, although Backup Exec can.