Backing up to NAS

[Jobos]

I know backing up to NAS has been covered many times recently but I thought I’ll get your opinions on this situation which happened to us recently.

 

For the past 11 months we have used a Lacie 1TB NAS drive which the servers back up to every weekday evening. This situation has worked very well till the NAS died last month. The problem was diagnosed to a faulty PSU so I didn’t need to return the NAS drive itself only the PSU. But what if I DID need to return the NAS drive… with all that data on it the consequences doesn’t bear thinking about . What are other doing about securing data on their NAS drives?

[Hightower]

As a rule of thumb, if I have to send anything off like that the HDD's come out first. That way if they send a new something I can just slot the HDD's in and away we go.

[teejay]

Use backup software that encrypts the backup, like Backup Exec.

[dhicks]

What are other doing about securing data on their NAS drives?

 

Build the NAS yourself out of generic parts. That way if a part breaks you can get a new bit from a local computer shop. Also, encrypt the data.

 

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David Hicks

[Jobos]

As a rule of thumb, if I have to send anything off like that the HDD's come out first. That way if they send a new something I can just slot the HDD's in and away we go.

 

I don't think the HDD can be removed from this model.

[rh91uk]

We use Password Protection on our archives here (using Acronis True Image Server) - prevents unauthorised peekages! it;s great.

[dhicks]

I don't think the HDD can be removed from this model.

 

Think "hacksaw".

 

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David Hicks

[webman]

Our Buffalo TeraStations failed miserably after a year, so we just took the drives and built one huge server from standard components (running Openfiler). Edited November 16, 2008 by webman

[torledo]

My 1TB Terastation failed earlier this year - the NIC part of it. It was out of warranty and I couldn't get any spare parts.

 

I shan't trust a dedicated NAS box so easily in future.

 

to you and webman.....there are terastations and then there are real NAS servers.

 

For most school budgets something like a storevault is the most affordable dedicated NAS that is actually fairly reliable.

 

Off the shelf these days is defintely worth a punt. The likes of Openfiler look great.....what i like about dedicated NAS is the all-in-one support for hardware and software and redudancy being built into the systems. Which is quite important if you have a NAS/SAN device which forms the core of your storgae infrastructure.

 

The downside is cost, not just for initial purchase and hardware parts like disks, but feature licenses. Even with a commercial NAS filer You shouldn't really have to pay for features that are standard with something like Openfiler.