Backup to home using FTTC?

[nicholab]

Has anyone deployed a NAS at home using a FTTC product to backup up the Schools data?

[ICTDirect_Dave]

Nope but we are considering doing just that with the server here at work.

 

Just a simple HP MicroServer in the garage I think

[twin--turbo]

errr, so when your house is broken into who is responsible for telling all the staff , students and parents that their personal data has gone walkies.

 

CAN-O-WORMS!

 

Rob

[twin--turbo]

We back our two sites across our wan link,

 

perhaps finding another school in your area who have a similar desire to yourself could agreed to secure each others backup.

 

Rob

[xenonive]

We are looking at backing up to another school but just sorting a minimal rental agreement so there is a paper trail should we both leave and next network managers think they own the box in their server room

[pcstru]

We are looking at backing up to another school but just sorting a minimal rental agreement so there is a paper trail should we both leave and next network managers think they own the box in their server room

Great Idea. Doesn't even need to be 'minimal' in that cost should be symmetric.

[MatthewL]

Data protection backing up to home, don't do it.

 

How would you feel having you bank data backed up to someones house. Don't do it, big mine field, sort something either to LA or another school.

[dhicks]

How would you feel having you bank data backed up to someones house.

 

You should be fine if you simply encrypt the data.

[glennda]

Great Idea. Doesn't even need to be 'minimal' in that cost should be symmetric.

 

Doesn't even have to have a cost - if you are both doing equal you can have a contract which states that it will cost £0.00 a year to do this for you and vice versa.

 

Or just a token jesture to each other of £1 or something!

 

Now many people are moving away from LEA lines with fast internet connections its very plausible situation. You could probably get a NAS device locally which will self replicate itself elsewhere.

[Norphy]

Another consideration is, although a lot of home internet providers market their product as unlimited they do keep tabs on how much data you're chewing through. If you're using an excessive amount, they could very well cut or limit your internet access and/or insist that you buy a business package.

 

I have agree with the general consensus of the thread that this isn't an especially good idea.

[nicholab]

It was just conceptual idea but everyone has raised good points. I do know of some network managers that take tapes off site so I would put it in that league. Working with another school is undoubtedly the best solutions. I find one of the key problems with school backup is that they want data from months ago in an instant and that's a pain with tape base off-site backup. Edited October 4, 2013 by nicholab

[sted]

It was just conceptual idea but everyone has raised good points. I do know of some network managers that take tapes off site so I would put it in that league. Working with another school is undoubtedly the best solutions. I find one of the key problems with school backup is that they want data from months ago in an instant and that's a pain with tape base off-site backup.

 

would turning on previous versions help with that granted its a "waste" of disk space but not a bad idea if it just whoops i deleted the wrong file

[Norphy]

Volume shadows only go back for a month or so and start overwriting themselves once the space limit has been hit. They're great for the "Oh bugger, I've just deleted a file" scenario but no so good for the "Can I have the version of the file from the 14 April 2005 please" scenario.

[dhicks]

I find one of the key problems with school backup is that they want data from months ago in an instant and that's a pain with tape base off-site backup.

 

There's no reason why people shouldn't have pretty much instant access to versioned backups of their files - this is just storage, and 4TB drives are around £120. Hosting your equipment somewhere offsite needs organising, but you can use a home setup if you have to (although, as pointed out, make sure you have a "business" Internet connection).

[sted]

does the caretaker / site manager etc live onsite i know of a few schools where they live on / next door to site and you could just run a cable there and have lan speed?

[AngryTechnician]

If anyone is doing this to home then full drive encryption is an absolute must, plus I strongly recommend a signed written agreement between you and someone senior at the school to formally authorise it.

[twin--turbo]

VSC has a 64 copy limit per volume which is quite frankley a bit s.....t

 

we do site-2-site line-2-nearline backup 2 times a day so only get 34 days of backup. It also gets pushed to the LTO4 autoloaders for longer term storage. It's not ideal and something we want to resolve so we can have more Near line copies.

 

Rob

[theo_logical]

This is something I've been working on for a while now while I fine-tune things ... and do all the other stuff that needs doing first.

We have a very good relationship with our neighbouring school so we're quite happy to have a reciprocal arrangement whereby we host each others NAS boxes in our server rooms. Seeing the rather flaky nature of some NAS boxes I've come to the conclusion that I won't sleep soundly unless I have backups of my backups. Probably two NAS boxes off-site, in the same site, replicating each other via IP rather than USB.

 

I'd be very grateful to hear what backup software and hardware other schools are using for this purpose. I believe that one of the most important features is the retention period, in other words the abilty to recover accidentally deleted files.

[twin--turbo]

we use DPM.

 

 

Our backup goes across town to our sister site. but we could talk to the other two schools that are litteraly our neighbour and nextdoor but one neigbour.

[nicholab]

Also I would not use a off the shelf nas box I would either build a server or buy a second hand one.

[zag]

We've always just backed up things to a different location on the school site.

[nicholab]

How do you archive data? That what nice about tape you can store it and not use power.

[theo_logical]

How do you archive data? That what nice about tape you can store it and not use power.

 

You could copy your archived data to an external drive and pop it in the safe. In years to come there's more likely to be PCs with USB ports than compatible tape drives and the appropriate backup software.

 

I like your suggestion of building your own server, the cheap NAS boxes although they have masses of disk space have some dreadful software, I've tried Freecom and Netgear. You might just as well build a good quality PC with loads of disk space.

[twin--turbo]

NASty if it's a buffalo.

 

Rob