Looking for the perfect backup strategy

[Guru42]

Yea, I know, questions like this get asked periodically, but I am not looking for software solutions as much as I am interested in hearing strategies. Have improvements in cloud storage changed your thinking?

 

Do you go directly from server to cloud? Use a periodic VM snapshot as a backup? Copy snapshots to the cloud? Anyone still using tape in the process? Does cloud take the place of other types of offsite storage?

 

Hopefully this thread will be OK here. Looking for a good place to start this conversation. Hoping for some input on establishing some "best practices" guidelines for our organization. Trying to come up with an orderly (and documented) process of who gets the tapes out of the drive in server room, who sends them offsite, how tapes are maintained stored onsite.

 

Currently have an ongoing (nightly) incremental backup to disk, will a full backup to disk, dupe to tape, done every weekend. Anyone have any systems or procedures they use to manage tapes? -- Rotation to offsite storage, how long to retain tapes, what to ship off, what to retain.

[Steve21]

"Perfect" is 3:2:1 model.

 

3 backup copies, 2 formats, 1 offsite.

 

So for example, Main servers -> DR/Backup Room DISK -> Offsite Tapes -> Cloud

Would give 3 copies, 3 formats, 2 offsite.

 

Or Main servers -> DR Room DISK -> DR Room 2 Disk -> Cloud

3 copies, 2 formats, 1 offsite

 

Prime example with your scenario is if your full backup has a corruption in it, you're copying that to tape (and/or cloud). Ideally you would run the tape/cloud backup as a separate process so even if one corrupts in the main backup, the tape etc would be different. Although not always possible but for example we run our USB offsite copies during the day just with a really low bandwidth limit.

 

Means we have:

 

Production SAN - Disk BackUp Locally

DR BackUP Server - Disk BackUp

Offsite - USB Copy

 

3 separate jobs, (yes you could argue it's a waste but if it's not impacting the network it's no issue to do it), so even if 2 got corrupted there's a third copy

 

In regards to the tapes (our USB version), we have 4 we rotate. 3 offsite (different locations in case someone burns/dies etc), 1 onsite for that weeks backup, and then rotate. So the last 3 weeks always offsite

 

Just my 2 cents but hope it helps

 

Steve

 

 

 

Steve

[error404]

Monday - Thursday - Backup to Tape (Differential backups)

This includes stuff like Staff/Student Fileservers, Exchange Servers, Web Servers, and other systems

 

Friday - Full backup

 

For SQL Servers

We use maintenance Plans across all SQL Servers which them backs them up to a Network Drive Daily i.e Database .bak files for a period of 5 days

Then we then backup the Network Drive Daily onto Tape as Full backups on the tape Drive so for SQL Every day we do a full backup

 

 

Tape Rotation

Differential Tapes we change them once a year

 

Full We use one set each week i.e

Friday 1

Friday 2

Friday 3

Friday 4

 

 

 

We then archive them off every 5 weeks and retain them for period of 3 years...so Friday one tape will be used 5 times then we will archive that off..so every 5 weeks we do a tape change for whatever Friday set we use

 

Then we move the tapes to our other campus weekly for safeguarding

we have 2 main campuses which runs the backups so one site does backups of their servers and then store them offsite that week

[cpjitservices]

We are an IT Support company - we support hundreds of companies across the region. We offer a backup service using multiple strategies. At most companies we have a local backup... some of those companies/businesses have bought products such as BackupAssist which is fine we run with that, some we have implemented our own. Mainly we use DeltaCopy to/from our servers at the main site, our main site is replicated to another site that we manage. Backups are mainly anything stored on servers and bare metals.

 

Backups run during the night every night.

[Guru42]

RE;>> then rotate. So the last 3 weeks always offsite

 

So when those tapes come back onsite, how long do you store them? (or just re-use or destroy?)

 

RE: >> cloud backup

 

Any long term retention there? Or just re-use / recycle space as needed?