(Another) CC4 to Vanilla thread

[foofighterjim]

Raising my old thread here; all but settled on what we are doing with the exception of backups.

 

In an ideal world we would have onsite and online backups (online purely for DR only).

 

I have had a look at products such as Redstor but the cost is much higher than what I can budget for as an on going cost (over £7.5K pa based on our data). I have had a look at Veeam too which increases in cost quite a lot once you add the online connector to the Backup Essentials package, then you have to factor in the cost of the online storage, suddenly this starts being around the same cost as Redstor.

 

Our site is split across two physical buildings but they are quite close to each other, approximately 30 meters apart. I was considering Veeam with a Synology box in each building and replicating the data. My reservation is that as both buildings are in such proximity that there is a chance that if one building were to catch fire there is a chance (albeit small) of losing both Synology boxes and therefore all of our data.

 

My final thought was to stick to the disk-2-disk-2-tape model, use Veeam Enterprise (I think Enterprise is needed for tape hardware support) and stick to tape backups being placed in the fire safe each day. This would involve paying for the Enterprise version of Veeam and then also paying for a tape loader and media. I don't have figures for this but I would expect it to be quite expensive.

 

What are other peoples thoughts? Is there another way around this that I haven't explored yet?

[5tu]

Raising my old thread here; all but settled on what we are doing with the exception of backups.

 

In an ideal world we would have onsite and online backups (online purely for DR only).

 

I have had a look at products such as Redstor but the cost is much higher than what I can budget for as an on going cost (over £7.5K pa based on our data). I have had a look at Veeam too which increases in cost quite a lot once you add the online connector to the Backup Essentials package, then you have to factor in the cost of the online storage, suddenly this starts being around the same cost as Redstor.

 

Our site is split across two physical buildings but they are quite close to each other, approximately 30 meters apart. I was considering Veeam with a Synology box in each building and replicating the data. My reservation is that as both buildings are in such proximity that there is a chance that if one building were to catch fire there is a chance (albeit small) of losing both Synology boxes and therefore all of our data.

 

My final thought was to stick to the disk-2-disk-2-tape model, use Veeam Enterprise (I think Enterprise is needed for tape hardware support) and stick to tape backups being placed in the fire safe each day. This would involve paying for the Enterprise version of Veeam and then also paying for a tape loader and media. I don't have figures for this but I would expect it to be quite expensive.

 

What are other peoples thoughts? Is there another way around this that I haven't explored yet?

 

We looked at the same and Redstor was coming out at around £7.5k which was way over budget. But we're now using Veeam with Veeam Cloud Connect and paying 6p per GB of cloud storage which for us works out MUCH MUCH cheaper once Veeam has done de-duplication and compression.

[synaesthesia]

Could you not fireproof a location in each of those buildings?

[foofighterjim]

We looked at the same and Redstor was coming out at around £7.5k which was way over budget. But we're now using Veeam with Veeam Cloud Connect and paying 6p per GB of cloud storage which for us works out MUCH MUCH cheaper once Veeam has done de-duplication and compression.

 

Do you mind sharing who your online storage is with (PM if needed), I work that out to be about £600 for 10TB of storage. What type of backup do you have Veeam doing to the cloud (Reverse Incremental)? Like I said we are only interested for DR purposes so only the latest data needs to be there.

 

Could you not fireproof a location in each of those buildings?

 

We have two fireproof safes on site but we cant get any data or power into them. Is there such a thing as a fire proof safe or cab where this can be done??

 

Edit: Of course there isn't, fireproof = airtight derp , I think the cost of fireproofing a section of the school would dwarf the price of online storage.

Edited March 20, 2018 by foofighterjim

[5tu]

Do you mind sharing who your online storage is with (PM if needed), I work that out to be about £600 for 10TB of storage. What type of backup do you have Veeam doing to the cloud (Reverse Incremental)? Like I said we are only interested for DR purposes so only the latest data needs to be there.

 

 

 

We have two fireproof safes on site but we cant get any data or power into them. Is there such a thing as a fire proof safe or cab where this can be done??

 

Our Cloud Connect provider is Peasoup - https://peasoup.net/baas

 

Main Veeam job is incremental and the Veeam Cloud Copy job literally copies the latest restore point(s) from the local repository.

[Squelch]

What are other peoples thoughts? Is there another way around this that I haven't explored yet?

 

I use Veeam and run an encrypted backup copy job to two rotated external hard drives. One gets taken home each day then swapped the following day (as well as a backup copy to NAS in another building).

We only have around 1TB to backup though so it might not be possible if you have 6TB+

[foofighterjim]

Our Cloud Connect provider is Peasoup - https://peasoup.net/baas

 

Main Veeam job is incremental and the Veeam Cloud Copy job literally copies the latest restore point(s) from the local repository.

 

Just crunched some numbers on this and we would be looking at about £420pm meaning £5,040pa added onto the cost of Veeam so it works out at about £500 cheaper than Redstor in year 1 and about £1,500pa cheaper for subsequent years. Still a little on the expensive side for us but food for thought none the less.

[foofighterjim]

How about this idea; two Synology boxes one on site, the other at another school? We aren't in a MAT or anything so I don't know how we would stand on a legal basis, we would obviously have to ensure that nobody at the other school could gain access to the storage. Downside is that we would be fronting all the risk and would have to come to some sort of hosting agreement, possibly a reciprocal deal where we host their DR backup.

[5tu]

Just crunched some numbers on this and we would be looking at about £420pm meaning £5,040pa added onto the cost of Veeam so it works out at about £500 cheaper than Redstor in year 1 and about £1,500pa cheaper for subsequent years. Still a little on the expensive side for us but food for thought none the less.

 

Why don't you do a free month trial of Cloud Connect? This will help you see what your actual storage costs would be - I was very pleasantly surprised to see my calculations were incorrect.

[foofighterjim]

Why don't you do a free month trial of Cloud Connect? This will help you see what your actual storage costs would be - I was very pleasantly surprised to see my calculations were incorrect.

 

Good point, I have heard that Veeam is quite good at compressing the backups, I take it you only pay for storage used i.e. if you are running low you can delete some of the incrementals and free up space?

[5tu]

Good point, I have heard that Veeam is quite good at compressing the backups, I take it you only pay for storage used i.e. if you are running low you can delete some of the incrementals and free up space?

 

Exactly.