Back up, Back up.

[MrPstv]

hi all, as the use of ict is growing so are the files, so this brings up the question of backing up files, what files on the curriculum server would be classed as a must to back up, profiles of teachers? lesson plans ? im just trying to get on top of things and this needs to be sorted, tape back up fails due to length of names used on files ,cant find files, or exceeds the limit.Primary school with over 100 staff and around 700 pupils, 300+- that have individual logons. other methods of back up would be appreciated .thanks.. how do you guys n girls do it?

[jmcdermott]

We backup all user areas every two days.

Exchange every day.

Shared areas twice a week.

Moodle once a week.

 

We backup to a Linux Nas containing 2 tb storage

and a small thecus nas containing 600 gig for me to take home.

 

Tapes are just to small now adays.

[elsiegee40]

We have a small setup and an enormous NAS... in a separate building a long way from the server

 

So we backup the whole lot daily - full backup - to the NAS

 

We also have Shadow copy in use on Shared Areas and Home drives.

[MrPstv]

anyone else?

[MrPstv]

any chance of links to sites? cost ? suppliers?

[Hightower]

I want us to implement a HDD backup - our tapes are starting to fail because of size and because the drives are getting too old.

 

We currently have a small (160gb) FreeNAS box that backs up all user data on a daily basis and keeps a weeks worth at a time - but this is only used for quick restores when a student deletes work. We also use Volume Shadow Copy which is extremely useful and I love it to bits.

 

But our tape backups just aren't reliable anymore - and I honestly feel that if the servers fell over we wouldn't be able to restore them properly.

[ninjabeaver]

Same boat I'm in here HighTower. I'm just in discussion with Dan at SCL Online to spec to servers with a few TB's of HDD storage on a RAID 5. One to backup the school servers and another to backup the backup.

 

Once we have it thrashed out I'll be happy to post it here as long as it's OK with Dan.

 

A few of my local NM's in Norfolk have a similar system in place.

 

Neaby schools example is :-

Dell PowerEdge 2900

Intel® Xeon® CPU E5320 @ 1.86GHz (Dual or quad core) 1GB ram.. but would recommend at least 2gb.

RAID5 Dell PERC5 (Adaptec) etc.. 1.2 TB at least.

(I bought a dell power edge 2900 with 8x 80gb hdd's for the drive bays and then bought 6x 500gb seagate drives)

 

OS: I'm using FreeBSD 6.2, but recommend CentOS 5.2. If the OS dies, will be reinstalling with CentOS!

Rsync will be used to copy from machine to machine and only 1 pc has samba installed with a shared directory so veritas backup exec can backup to it.

 

Hope that's of some help to someone.

[Hightower]

Hi Simon,

 

I've tested rsync (across 2 freenas's) and it worked a treat! It was fantastic. I've spec'd up a couple of home made boxe's but that's using software RAID (had it at about £400 a machine for plenty of RAM and HDD and a decent mobo and chip).

 

If you could post the prices up when you get them though that would be great. The SMT know I'm pushing towards it so it would be something else to pass on to them.

[MrPstv]

so who configures these backup systems? only asking as i wouldnt have the time to do it or have the time to have a play to learn how to do it.

[jmcdermott]

any chance of links to sites? cost ? suppliers?

 

We picked up our HP Server for £107 from insight.com, and just added 2* 1tb sata drives (£80 each), then installed ubuntu (Free).

 

Server is nothing special, AMD x2 2.2, 512 ram, 160gig sata hdd, but does the job well.

[jmcdermott]

Worth having a look at Comodo Backup, completely free, has a good sync setup it wich is very easy to setup and can sync to Hdd, Network share, FTP, or tape/cd.

 

Free File Backup Software Download

[ninjabeaver]

so who configures these backup systems? only asking as i wouldnt have the time to do it or have the time to have a play to learn how to do it.

 

Something I'm doing myself. There might be someone out there who can price a full install for you.

[elsiegee40]

so who configures these backup systems? only asking as i wouldnt have the time to do it or have the time to have a play to learn how to do it.

 

 

Did it myself with NTbackup - took very little time to do - and I'm not a very technical techy

[Hightower]

Same as Elsie and Ninja here. Set up the FreeNAS server myself and just used ntbackup on the windows servers.

 

FreeNAS is a doddle to set up (I know next to nothing about Linux and I've had no trouble with it) and it has a really good GUI. As for ntbackup - just backup your files to 'File' rather than tape.

[MrPstv]

thanks all for your help,il look into it or maybe just pass on the info to the ICT co-ordinator,on the other hand i think it will still be an issue 12 months from now if i were to do so, i will end up sorting it myself. thanks again .

[bossman]

Just hang an LT04 autoloader of the back of a NAS box and you have the ultimate Disk 2 disk 2 tape solution and you can use a variety of backup software solutions including Symantecs backupexec, Acronis Universal backup and restore anywhere etc etc.

I would backup all servers as a whole on a weekend (especially if you have a great deal to backup) starting friday night and then each school day an incremental backup with a 90 day end of term backup for good measure.

Hardware and software costs around 6k which everybody will gasp at, but what cost a good secure backup which you can totally rely upon.

[sdc]

We have around 15 servers, each of which has at least some part of its file system backed up every night. Because of the amount of data (particularly users' home areas and media files) we've had to stagger the backups - so we have one part backed up to tape on Mon/Wed/Fri and the other part on Tues/Thurs. This works fine in the most part but is a bit of a pain when a file was created and deleted within the space between the last backup and now...!

 

I'm looking to implement some form of NAS to do a nightly backup of everything; this would be in addition to the tapes, meaning that (a) we have a second backup and (b) we can quickly restore the odd file deleted by a user rather than having to wander halfway across the site to get the backup tapes from the fire safe, and then wait while the tape spools to the right place (assuming we picked up the right tape...!). Just been given a price of around £2000 for this Netgear NAS but I suspect there may be cheaper ways of making my own version of this... any thoughts or suggestions appreciated!

 

Hope some of the above is of help ... or at least interest!

[MrPstv]

The head(boss) was looking at getting a server setup in a separate building,data then would be duplicated on that server ,so in theory have a system that would be a clone ,plug and sort of play system,not sure if it exists and if it does how much it would cost? any ideas?

[CHR1S]

We use a Tandberg RDX quickstore Tandberg Data: Search Result

 

And a 2TB NAS Box on Gigabit.

 

Once a week to Quickstore and daily to the NAS.

[sdc]

The head(boss) was looking at getting a server setup in a separate building,data then would be duplicated on that server ,so in theory have a system that would be a clone ,plug and sort of play system,not sure if it exists and if it does how much it would cost? any ideas?

 

We used to have a system where I worked previously doing exactly this - it completely mirrored a (Novell) server to identical hardware; the product was called Vinca StandbyServer; it still comes up after a quick Google, together with Windows references - but I'm afraid I don't know much about it, as it was quite a while ago that I used it. I do recall it was a pain to get the "main" server back if you had to use the standby one, although in the case of a problem it was fairly quick and easy to get the standby into use (about 10 mins). I would imagine that there are other - and better! - products out there to do just that now.

[zag]

We use backupexec on a separate workstation with 2 x 250gb drives in.

 

We have a 2 weekly backup that goes on each separate drive.

 

I then take home a copy every now and then, but not too bothered as the backup machine is in a seperate building to the others.

 

I use one of these to take the data home, its great because it doesnt need an external power supply. Just plug into the port.

 

http://images.tigerdirect.com/skuimages/large/W10-8010-main.jpg

 

The simpler you make a backup system, the better imo. Having the backup always on-line means it takes a matter of seconds to do a restore.

[ninjabeaver]

This is the quote from Dan Whittaker (Elky on EduGeek) at SCL Online - Homepage.

Dan has given me the OK to post this here.

 

Intel SR2520SAR* 2U Rackmount Hot Swap + S5000VSA Board

Intel Xeon E5405 Quad Core 45nm 2.0Ghz

Kingston 2GB FB DIMM (2x 1GB)

Intel 8 Port HW Raid SATA 256MB

Seagate Barracuda ES.2 500GB SATA 300 x 6

20x DVDRW SATA 5.25"

Intel 2U Front Bezel

Hot Swap Drive Carrier

 

* SR2520SAR Includes;

Intel® Server Board S5000VSASATAR

Intel® Server Chassis SR2520

One 600-watt 1+0 hot-swap power supply

Four 3.5” hard drive carriers

Rack handles

System rail

2 x Intel® PRO/1000 EB Ethernet connections with Intel® I/O

Acceleration Technology (Intel® I/OAT)

 

I can supply you with this for £1850.00+VAT or I can supply it with an additional 600 Watt PSU Module for 1+1 Redundant Operation for £1985+VAT

[Hightower]

This is the quote from Dan Whittaker (Elky on EduGeek) at SCL Online - Homepage.

Dan has given me the OK to post this here.

 

I'm looking at getting something a little lower spec'd than that and about a quarter of the price. I know you only get what you pay for but in schools you know how the scenario is.

 

I use one of these to take the data home, its great because it doesnt need an external power supply. Just plug into the port.

 

I have one of these (120gb), used it daily for personal stuff. Now though (after about 4 months) when I plug it in it keeps disconnecting randomly - annoying when copying files. (tested in different machine with diff cables).

 

Now I've pulled it from the caddy and am planning on giving it to my brother to use in his PS3. I just hope the HDD is ok and it was the caddy causing the problems.

[matt40k]

Only use hdd backups for non important date.

 

Tape is anything that = my death. Such as course work, email etc.

 

Tape is god. HDD = to easy to get a virus\delete + high cost of archiving + if you drop it's dead\dieing.

 

Best setup I've see by far is where they have a server with TB hdd and a autoloader which backs up the hdd. Every other server dumps to it.

[Hightower]

Only use hdd backups for non important date.

 

Tape is anything that = my death. Such as course work, email etc.

 

Tape is god. HDD = to easy to get a virus\delete + high cost of archiving + if you drop it's dead\dieing.

 

I disagree - tapes are quickly proving themselves to be an old technology. If you have a backup of your servers and a backup of your backup, the chances of them all failing at the same time is very very slim.

 

We just got a new MIS server and they use HDD cartridges - you insert them on a daily basis like a tape but it's a tiny 2.5 HDD inside a cartridge.