A bit advice re backups

[Theldron]

I work at 2 schools, 2 days at one, and 3 at another.

 

The school I work for 2 days, still uses hard drives to be swapped for backups and they are placed in a safe. But as I am only there two days, the backups are being done for 3 days. I have asked a member of admin to change them but she keeps forgetting and I don't want to put that on someone else as backups are so important. The backups are being sorted in the summer, with us moving to offsite backups with the other school.

 

In the meantime I was thinking of setting up a backup server with 6 2tb drives in FreeNas and placing that at the other end of the school literally in a separate building to the server room (there is a leisure center between the other building and the building with the server room). I would backup to this for the time being. I think this would be the best option, but was wondering if anybody else has any other ideas that might work?

 

I am currently backing up with Backup Exec for file server and Admin server, though we are in the process of moving to Arbor from SIMS which will help.

 

Cheers

[Edutech98]

So would you still keep the tape backup but then have the backup to your server as an additional backup to cover the days of the week when you are not there? Providing it isn't going to cause you to much work I'd go with that!

 

If its a big job can you scale it down and just backup absolute essentials (eg MIS/Finance) - just thinking there is only a few weeks to go until you get a perm solution so wouldn't want to spend too much time on it providing SLT are aware of the risks of the current situation.

 

The only thing I wouldn't do would be to get rid of the tape backup yet, just in case if you go full backup to the server, you can run the risk that Malware might spread to your file server AND your backup, where as with the tape there isn't that risk.

[Theldron]

Yeah I would continue to backup, not to tapes to hard drives that I place into a dock, these are then swapped the following day and put into a fire proof safe in a locked room in another building.

 

I backup to hard drives for 2 days and then on a Saturday I do a full backup to a separate NAS located in another building. But I was going to setup a backup solution to backup to on the days I am not here. If that makes sense.

[Edutech98]

Have you looked at any cloud backup as an interim? I've used Mozy and Redstor to backup Sims etc and the usual file servers. Just seems a shame to spend the time building a server for it to be made redundant in 3-4 weeks.

[Theldron]

I would love to mate, but the school won't pay any money for that. I think I am stuck with doing the server to be honest.

[PotNoodleTech]

I would strongly recommend a Synology NAS box, they do 2bay, 4 bay or more so you can fit to your budget. Totally rock solid backups. (I've got two of the 12 bay versions).

[LeMarchand]

I've done the FreeNAS thing at one of my schools and it seems to work.

 

I cover 3 schools and looked into School A backing up to School B, School B to C and C to A, but the LEA's documentation on the prerequisites they wanted before opening ports etc were so dense that I gave up on the idea. You may have more luck.

[Edutech98]

If its down to cost and you don't really want to spend the time building the server then I'd bat it over to SLT and let them decide what to do. Give them a few options;

 

Option 1: Do nothing with the risk that if a disaster occurred there restore could be up to 2 days old - some potential GDPR implications

 

Option 2: SLT Instruct the member of staff they must change the backup tape and it is there responsibility

 

Option 3: Some money for a cloud backup of essential data for the next 3-4 weeks

 

Option 4: You spend the time building a server, work out your time vs the cloud cost to see if this is cost effective

 

Of course it does sound like a good project to build a backup server so you might not even give them the option