Olliedawg Posted July 3 Posted July 3 (edited) We currently have the following & this isn't enough to satisfy the RPA criteria. Actual Data on the Servers Backup Synology NAS in separate building Backups replicated to Cloud Provider (immutable) What do you all do for the "Offline" backup requirement? To take a single full offline backup of all our data I need at least 8TB. Was thinking of getting another NAS & only plugging this in to copy the backup, then turning it off. Edited July 3 by Olliedawg
Cat_Jam148 Posted July 3 Posted July 3 21 minutes ago, Olliedawg said: What do you all do for the "Offline" backup requirement? To take a single full offline backup of all our data I need at least 8TB. Was thinking of getting another NAS & only plugging this in to copy the backup, then turning it off. We have a couple of 8TB USB HDDs that once a week, one of them is used to perform a full backup of our data. It is the exact same backup run normally, just pointed at the USB drive. That then gets stored in a safe place, with the other drive being used for the backup in the next week. 1
Olliedawg Posted July 3 Author Posted July 3 36 minutes ago, Cat_Jam148 said: We have a couple of 8TB USB HDDs that once a week, one of them is used to perform a full backup of our data. It is the exact same backup run normally, just pointed at the USB drive. That then gets stored in a safe place, with the other drive being used for the backup in the next week. That's a cheaper option than a NAS I suppose!
dmj Posted July 3 Posted July 3 1 hour ago, Olliedawg said: We currently have the following & this isn't enough to satisfy the RPA criteria. Actual Data on the Servers Backup Synology NAS in separate building Backups replicated to Cloud Provider (immutable) What do you all do for the "Offline" backup requirement? To take a single full offline backup of all our data I need at least 8TB. Was thinking of getting another NAS & only plugging this in to copy the backup, then turning it off. I don' think it's the offline that's the issue. It should be 3 backups - 2 onsite and one offsite. You have a single backup onsite.
Olliedawg Posted July 3 Author Posted July 3 25 minutes ago, dmj said: I don' think it's the offline that's the issue. It should be 3 backups - 2 onsite and one offsite. You have a single backup onsite. I see. I suppose taking a full backup copy each week onto an offline storage medium would cover that. Our audit specifically stated "offline" storage
FN-GM Posted July 4 Posted July 4 15 hours ago, Olliedawg said: What do you all do for the "Offline" backup requirement? Good old LTO tapes
Jobos Posted July 4 Posted July 4 We backup each night to NAS and have 2 USB encrypted drives that get taken offside and alternately 1 gets bought in for a weekly backup
gaz350b Posted July 4 Posted July 4 (edited) 12 hours ago, FN-GM said: Good old LTO tapes Exactly this I want to know exactly where the backup is. Tape library and backup is in another part of the school. Tapes then go to another building we own down the road in a fire proof safe. Edited July 4 by gaz350b
fiza Posted July 4 Posted July 4 Doesn’t the 321 rule mean 3 copies on 2 different media with 1 offsite? This includes your production copy so OP has 2 onsite and 1 offsite which is the immutable cloud copy. Why is this not good enough for RPA? 2
FN-GM Posted July 4 Posted July 4 (edited) 6 hours ago, gaz350b said: Exactly this I want to know exactly where the backup is. Tape library and backup is in another part of the school. Tapes then go to another building we own down the road in a fire proof safe. Short term, they stay onsite and every few weeks a company collect them and stores them offsite. We do have another location we own, but it's so far away its too much of logistical challenge to send them there. We do have other online copies that are stored offsite. The offline copies are for cyber attacks. Edited July 4 by FN-GM
Sylv3r Posted July 6 Posted July 6 What are people classing as 3-2-1 for serverless / cloud only schools. We've moved around 25 of our primaries to serverless - but if we need to have local backups in school pulling their O365 data then it kinda defeats the object of moving everything to the cloud!
Olliedawg Posted July 6 Author Posted July 6 On 04/07/2026 at 19:10, fiza said: Doesn’t the 321 rule mean 3 copies on 2 different media with 1 offsite? This includes your production copy so OP has 2 onsite and 1 offsite which is the immutable cloud copy. Why is this not good enough for RPA? That is what I thought, I always thought the original data counted as one copy.
TwistedHelixis Posted July 6 Posted July 6 (edited) 1 hour ago, Sylv3r said: What are people classing as 3-2-1 for serverless / cloud only schools. We've moved around 25 of our primaries to serverless - but if we need to have local backups in school pulling their O365 data then it kinda defeats the object of moving everything to the cloud! I use Cubebackup to do an onsite copy of our Google data on an old server in the school. Its really cheap and I get to use old equipment that might have been dumped. Also Synology + does this for free I then use 2 off-site Synology NAS units, one of these is only turned on once every 6 weeks. Edited July 6 by TwistedHelixis
k-strider Posted July 6 Posted July 6 (edited) Ours is done like this and i always thought it followed the 3-2-1 Onprem (hyper-V VMs &Legacy fileshares) Daily backup to MS System Center DPM 2025. Monthly DPM data is "restored" to 6TB Hard drive i have about 8 on Rotation and the most recent one is stored off site. This will now be shrinking to fit on 4TB disks as less on prem data exists.. I also backup some VMs to Synology but that's just for extra piece of mind Google Workspace Daily backed up to a Synology NAS live on on site at school. Every 2 Weeks one of two alternative Synology NAS are powered on and the Backup is taken then powered down. so there are 3 backups and one always off line Plus the live data which should cover 2 mediums (live Google and Synlogolys) and 3 backups.. its on 3 Synlogoys + Google Edited July 6 by k-strider
dmj Posted July 6 Posted July 6 1 hour ago, Sylv3r said: What are people classing as 3-2-1 for serverless / cloud only schools. We've moved around 25 of our primaries to serverless - but if we need to have local backups in school pulling their O365 data then it kinda defeats the object of moving everything to the cloud! Serverless simply means the servers are ephemeral (typically containers that scale from zero at night to full load in the day). So as long as the data meets the 3-2-1 rule it is compliant, the servers themselves don't count because they get built and destroyed multiple times per day. In this scenario onsite would be in the same provider as your cloud infrastructure, and offsite would be a third party cloud. Ideally you would also have an Isolated Recovery Environment (IRE), i.e the third party cloud also spins up the same containers with the same data - so if the entire infrastructure can be replicated incase of a provider failure. 1
FN-GM Posted July 6 Posted July 6 4 hours ago, Sylv3r said: What are people classing as 3-2-1 for serverless / cloud only schools. We've moved around 25 of our primaries to serverless - but if we need to have local backups in school pulling their O365 data then it kinda defeats the object of moving everything to the cloud! How are you backing up configuration of any on premise devices such as network infrastructure?
Sylv3r Posted July 6 Posted July 6 6 hours ago, FN-GM said: How are you backing up configuration of any on premise devices such as network infrastructure? We are using the API available and a third-party to backup our switch and AP config.
FN-GM Posted July 7 Posted July 7 15 hours ago, Sylv3r said: We are using the API available and a third-party to backup our switch and AP config. Is that to the cloud or a local solution? Just seeing what others do/
mavhc Posted July 7 Posted July 7 On 03/07/2026 at 13:10, Olliedawg said: We currently have the following & this isn't enough to satisfy the RPA criteria. Actual Data on the Servers Backup Synology NAS in separate building Backups replicated to Cloud Provider (immutable) What do you all do for the "Offline" backup requirement? To take a single full offline backup of all our data I need at least 8TB. Was thinking of getting another NAS & only plugging this in to copy the backup, then turning it off. You argue that immutable means offline, that's the point of immutable after all
BKGarry Posted July 7 Posted July 7 Do Synology is used to backup 365 and Google Workspace for us. I use Microsoft DPM for onsite servers and (no laughing now) an external SCSI LTO8 tape drive, that backs up to tape once a week, with 12 tapes in rotation through that. Can't get more offline than a tape that is out of a drive and in a safe elsewhere.
Olliedawg Posted July 7 Author Posted July 7 18 minutes ago, mavhc said: You argue that immutable means offline, that's the point of immutable after all I know. We've now got 2 8TB Western Digital USB HDD's so we're going to rotate those, good practice anyway I guess.
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