How many backups?

[Hightower]

Didn't know where to put this so here it is.

 

Our tape backup solution has been intermittantly working for a while now. I needed a cheap solution (as our budget is rubbish this year) so ordered 4 x 500GB HDD.

 

I now have two machines with 1TB of space each that I am backing up to. The master receives the backups on a night, then uses RSYNC during the day to send it to the second box in a different location (so we have an 'off-site' backup of the backup).

 

Anyhow, my query is this. I have enough storage (1TB) to backup 1 weeks worth of all the servers. This is using a full on the Friday then differential during the week. Is 1 weeks worth of backups enough? Does it cover me if the sh*t hits the fan?

[ninjabeaver]

I like to keep 4 weeks. But if thats all you can afford and you have put it on paper your concerns to the SMT and / or Governors then you have covered your back.

 

But you still get some students who decide to tell you after X amount of days after your oldest backup that they have deleted some work etc.

[Hightower]

When we were using tapes we had 4 weeks worth:

 

Mon-Thurs

Fri1-Fri4

 

I would still like to use tapes, but our drives/tapes are so old that they don't work properly. They have been for repair numerous times and to be honest I've just given up with them since installing the HDD system.

 

If we had a fire/server fail now at least I'd be confident that we can recover all the data, where as I wasn't when we were using tapes. The only worry I have with it is if a student/teacher asks to recover work, and we can't because the backups don't go far enough back. Is this a problem?

[IrritableTech]

The amount of students who come into my office asking for files to be restored which they haven't seen for "three or four weeks maybe, I'm not sure" beggar’s belief.

 

I would document why you have had to go for a short period of time as suggested.

[tonyd]

Why not use robocopy to sych home & shared areas to your backup servers, and then make sure you keep a large chunck of disk for shadow copies of this same data. This way you have an instant access to a recent copy, and easy access to older versions.

[grumpy_git]

When we were using tapes we had 4 weeks worth:

 

Mon-Thurs

Fri1-Fri4

 

This is what we do at the moment, with the addition of a quarterly one which goes offsite to the NM's house (others kept in a fireproof safe).

[Hightower]

Why not use robocopy to sych home & shared areas to your backup servers, and then make sure you keep a large chunck of disk for shadow copies of this same data. This way you have an instant access to a recent copy, and easy access to older versions.

 

We already use Shadow copies on the servers.

[DMcCoy]

Shadow copy can't be relied upon for backups, if there is a fault or making the copy is too slow it will simply delete all the shadow copy files (I've had this a few times).

 

At minimum you will want Mon-Thurs, Fri1-Fri4 and 3 monthly backups, you could go to 3 weekly with the month ones being the last Friday - giving you the same number of backups as a 10 slot autoloader for example.

 

I assume the backup servers are in different locations to the main servers?

[Sylv3r]

We do:

 

Mon - Thur (differential)

Friday 1 (Full Backup)

Friday 2 (Full Backup)

Friday 3 (Full Backup)

Friday 4 (Full Backup)

Monthly (Full Backup)

6 Monthly (Full Backup)

 

This near enough covers every eventuality for us.

[OverWorked]

I have something similar to you. A Buffalo Terastation NAS 1.5TB at the far end of the school.

 

I back up everyone's documents and the DC's system state every day, with weekly full and daily incremental backups. I backup the stuff that is less important and rarely changes, like the apps folder with daily incremental and 3-monthly full backups.

 

I also have a bit of space for stuff that I keep for 6 months and back up manually occasionally.

 

I have about 250GB to back up, and that 1.5TB capacity gives me about 2 months. It's rare that I'm asked for something older than that.