maniac Posted August 10, 2009 Posted August 10, 2009 As the title says, those that still use tape backups like me, do you run a backup on Saturday and Sunday nights? We run a full backup on a Friday which uses about 4 tapes on our old but functional AIT3 changer, and then we do differential backups on a Monday-Thursday which just uses a single tape normally. This is the best backup routine I could come up with with the technology we have available as I ran out of money for a new backup device this year, it will be happening next year however so I won't need quite so many tapes for a full backup, but for now it will have to do. Just wondering thou if I really should be running a backup on a saturday and sunday night as well. What do you do? Mike.
FN-GM Posted August 10, 2009 Posted August 10, 2009 We use 2 backup methods Every Server runs a ful backup mon - fri every night. We also use CPS that takes backups of chages files in shared and home areas every hour 1
AngryTechnician Posted August 10, 2009 Posted August 10, 2009 No. Full backup of each server every weekday (We have a pitiful amount of data due for various reasons so can fit it all on 1 tape per server atm). All that's changing soon, however, as I am on the verge of ordering my new server and NAS to run Data Protection Manager on. 1
Sylv3r Posted August 10, 2009 Posted August 10, 2009 We don't but its probably something schools should consider especially with the introduction of remote access to network documents for staff and students which now happens in most schools. 1
witch Posted August 10, 2009 Posted August 10, 2009 No - but as Sylv3r says, it is perhaps something we need to think about as remote access is possibly about to be implemented 1
pete Posted August 10, 2009 Posted August 10, 2009 No, we don't. Well, shadow copy will run but it's not "backup". 1
srochford Posted August 10, 2009 Posted August 10, 2009 What would happen if there was a fire on Saturday? I'm assuming that you don't use the same tape every Friday so you'd be able to restore from "last" Friday's tape plus Monday - Thursday diffs. You'd lose anything done after Thursday night (so all day Friday). Does that matter? Maybe not - but it's something that needs to be considered as part of your disaster recovery. Just doing a backup on Saturday by leaving in the tape doesn't help - you still lose it if there's a fire (it's probably unlikely but so are the other disasters you're protecting against) Can you have a computer with a big hard drive somewhere else secure in the building and do a backup to that? That way you've got the comfort factor of belt and braces (the tape drive will fail on the day you absolutely must be able to restore but that other PC will be working) There is a downside with disc backup - you generally don't have historical copies of stuff (so you can get back to "yesterday" or maybe "last Friday" but not much further. Whether that matters depends on what you're trying to do. I've always felt that backup is to do with disaster - the disc fails, the server gets stolen, the building catches fire - and archiving is about making sure you've got old versions of data (what was the finance data like at the end of the financial year? Give me year 11 project work from 1 July) 1
Hightower Posted August 10, 2009 Posted August 10, 2009 We currently run full backups on a friday to a NAS box, with diff's running weekdays. The NAS box has a mirror (RSync) in a different building as a fail over too. Next week we are installing a new autoloader so we will be moving to a D2D2T solution, but again only on weekdays (mon - fri). The one exception to this is our Moodle server which backs up during the weekend too. We have volume shadows running too, but only twice a day - hoping to increase this to every hour of the day when we increase our hard drive capacity. 1
DMcCoy Posted August 10, 2009 Posted August 10, 2009 We currently run full backups on a friday to a NAS box, with diff's running weekdays. The NAS box has a mirror (RSync) in a different building as a fail over too. Next week we are installing a new autoloader so we will be moving to a D2D2T solution, but again only on weekdays (mon - fri). The one exception to this is our Moodle server which backs up during the weekend too. We have volume shadows running too, but only twice a day - hoping to increase this to every hour of the day when we increase our hard drive capacity. shadow copies are quite resource intensive and can slow file serving down quite considerably when running. If one were unable to complete within the hour then it would simply delete all shadow copies for that volume! 1
Sylv3r Posted August 10, 2009 Posted August 10, 2009 Can you have a computer with a big hard drive somewhere else secure in the building and do a backup to that? That way you've got the comfort factor of belt and braces (the tape drive will fail on the day you absolutely must be able to restore but that other PC will be working) This is exactly what we do - a SAN sitting in our sixth form centre away from our server room. The capacity is there for a weekend backup and I am considering this also. All being well the fire doesn't job from one building to the other to reach our sixth form block. 1
Awfers Posted August 11, 2009 Posted August 11, 2009 Full backup late every evening of every weekday, with incrementals every 15 minutes. 1
smadison Posted August 11, 2009 Posted August 11, 2009 Mon- Fri tape backups in addition to a full ROBOCopy ran everyday from the servers and SAN to a dedicated backup system. The backup system is then backed up onto tape nightly. 1
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