Backup solution

[Badaz52]

Hi everyone,

 

We are currently using Veeam and doing reverse incrementals on a nightly basis, this gives us 14 restore points on file. Once a month we have been taking our file servers to tape and archiving these away for 2-3 years. Our tape drive needs replacing with one that takes newer media as our file servers can take 5-6 tapes each time which is ridiculous. It has been recommended to me that I buy a NAS solution and place it on the other side of the school and use this to extend our 2 weeks worth of backups for maybe up to a months worth.

 

I'd like to ditch the tapes altogether as the likeliness of us a) being able to find someones work on a tape after 2 years or b) the tape being in a suitable condition to recover files from is slim. Certainly we are never going to do a full restore from any tapes as the data would be too old.

 

To ditch the tapes would involve the school changing its policy on keeping data to which I recommended to them that we should write a policy that puts the onus on students to request their work from us before they leave the school.

 

What backup routine do you guys have? what policies do you have? is anyone still using tapes? I need to convince governors that I am doing the right thing!

 

Thanks!

[NetworkServices]

I have a dedicated backup server with a 25TB storage controller attached all housed in a separate building from the main servers. We use a grandfather, father, son routine with a 5 month retention period before the oldest backup can be overwritten. I use Backup Exec.

[flyinghaggis]

We ditched tape for a NAS stored in another building on the site a few years back and have recently switch to Veeam (from Microsoft DPM!).

 

We're also investigating using some kind of cloud/offsite backup as well in case anything happens to both the main and backup server (eg Ransomware, etc). Cloud storage seems like the logical option as an alternative to tape.

[DrBeaker]

I have a dedicated backup server with a 25TB storage controller attached all housed in a separate building from the main servers. We use a grandfather, father, son routine with a 5 month retention period before the oldest backup can be overwritten. I use Backup Exec.

 

How have you setup the storage on it, RAID, Storage spaces direct etc?

 

What sort of price did that cost?

 

Any backup of that at all?

 

Any surge/UPS connected to it?

[NetworkServices]

Yep all set up in RAID 5 which I know isn't the ideal setup but I've not had any problems with it. When I come to refresh the server I'll probably change the RAID type. I don't have any additional backup of that even though I suggested we should have two units. The powers above were content with the risk factor over cost. I can't remember the cost of the system as we got it a few years ago. The server is a ProLiant DL380G7 with an attached HP drive enclosure. The whole system is protected by surge/UPS.

[Jcx500]

All Cloud Backup, are looking into a small onsite NAS though

[Tefters]

Here's what I got setup:

 

- VSS on file server for 1 month, quick and easy stupid situation file restoral.

- Veeam with 2 reverse incremental backup jobs, 1 for FS and 1 for rest of infrastructure.

- 2x LenovoEMC px12-400r at either end of the school (solid brick OLD OLD OLD school, no way a fire or flood will hit both parts of the building before being isolated!)

- Jobs backup to 1 of the NAS boxes and then copy jobs immediately after finish to the other NAS.

- 1x i3 workstation acting as a transport server for Veeam as all other roles are on a VM, this stops loopback transport traffic.

- The FS backup job is 3 months while the rest of the infrastructure is 1 month, backing up for anything longer seems to be a waste in this day and age. If you are having to go to backup older than 3 months then questions really need to be asked as to why and what year you live in!

- The NAS boxes are overkill and could be a smaller model but I got them at a steal deal of £1.5k per empty box and then just shoved some WD 3TB reds in. Half populated and I am about to shove in some old 2TB WD blacks taken out of our live SANS as we just put in some new Micron SSD's

- Out live setup is 2x SAN in HA mirror failover with a 3 host server cluster so I feel between both setups we are in a good place.

[hallb15]

Ditch the tape.

Use two NAS boxes in separate buildings if you can and duplicate backups from one to the other. Add in a monthly backup to a USB drive which you or the Head takes home when its not being used to back up. That's what we do and it seems to work well for us. Restore from NAS is way quicker and simpler than tapes and you have redundancy in case one or both NAS boxes are compromised in some way.

[Tefters]

Ditch the tape.

Use two NAS boxes in separate buildings if you can and duplicate backups from one to the other. Add in a monthly backup to a USB drive which you or the Head takes home when its not being used to back up. That's what we do and it seems to work well for us. Restore from NAS is way quicker and simpler than tapes and you have redundancy in case one or both NAS boxes are compromised in some way.

 

Sounds good up to the USB take home... GDPR *eeeekkk*. You're 2 NAS box in different buildings would be enough.

[atcoates]

All my sites only have one server but we rotate 10 RDX tapes using backup exec each week. We supplment that with cloud backup for main shares and users shares (3 times a day) and system state. For me it's ideal as I can restore files for staff when needed using the cloud solution (often working remotely) and in the event of a DR we have the RDX \ Cloud. The cloud backup only costs us a few hundred pounds a year. We also rely on six years olds to swap the back up tapes!!!

[hallb15]

Sounds good up to the USB take home... GDPR *eeeekkk*. You're 2 NAS box in different buildings would be enough.

 

If the drive/backup is encrypted and the process of taking the drive home is included in the schools data protection policy, then you've documented proof that the school has taken reasonable steps to minimise risk of data loss, whilst still providing a third level of backup in case of a catastrophic disaster in the school or a ransomware attack. This is perfectly acceptable within GDPR guidelines.

[KevinB]

We've a pair of EqualLogics, one in each site in syncrep for HA/DR, shadow copies taken 3x per day, then for traditional backup use VEEAM and run daily, weekly and monthly reverse incrementals, each to its own repo on two non-domain storage boxes (refurbished Dell 510's from serversource.co.uk with 36TB provided by a bunch of 4TB drives in RAID 6). We keep a month of daily backups and six months of weeklies on one and 2 years of monthlies on the other. The daily/weekly box is in our DR site and the monthly box in our main room. Edited March 15, 2019 by KevinB

[DrBeaker]

Ditch the tape.

Use two NAS boxes in separate buildings if you can and duplicate backups from one to the other. Add in a monthly backup to a USB drive which you or the Head takes home when its not being used to back up. That's what we do and it seems to work well for us. Restore from NAS is way quicker and simpler than tapes and you have redundancy in case one or both NAS boxes are compromised in some way.

Nope that's just asking for trouble, even if it's encrypted. Home Insurance, technically rental of your home space for data storage :/

 

Sounds good up to the USB take home... GDPR *eeeekkk*. You're 2 NAS box in different buildings would be enough.

 

Yep I'd play the GDPR game and then NO either 1) say the Head can take it home in line with their responsibility level, or 2) give me the offsite backup I asked for.

[jmak]

Nope that's just asking for trouble, even if it's encrypted. Home Insurance, technically rental of your home space for data storage :/

 

 

 

Yep I'd play the GDPR game and then NO either 1) say the Head can take it home in line with their responsibility level, or 2) give me the offsite backup I asked for.

Or ask another nearby school if they'll store one of your tapes and swap each week.

 

But, yeah, don't take it to your house.

[FragglePete]

Backup server using Veeam which has 40Tb of local disk storage, this then gets copied to a Synology NAS Unit in another building.

 

Also has a LTO-8 Tape drive installed which everything is copied too as well. This then get's stored in a Data-Safe in another building far end of the site.

 

One LTO-8 has fitted the entire school data on it with ease. Having to use LTO-7 formatted as LTO-8M presently but this seems to fit everything as well so all good for the timebeing. Keep a weekly tape, and also an end of month tape which we keep for a year.

 

Backup solution working well as I'm using at in anger at the moment restoring VMs to other hosts as our Cluster through a complete wobbly this weekend. Full backup that starts at the end of play on the Friday backups everything and onto the Tape by 11pm presently.

 

Pete