Off-site backup

[danIT]

anyone recommend a company? i think ive heard of a company called ThinkSafe??

[CyberNerd]

I looked into offsite backup but concluded we couldn't possibly due to the amount of data to bandwidth ratio.

If yuo could do it I'd just hire a server somewhere. rackspace or sumfing.

[plexer]

Are you looking into using an internet link to upload your backup to a remote site or are you talking about tape vaulting where they turn up and pick up your tapes?

 

Ben

[danIT]

were looking at internet link

[mrforgetful]

Are you looking into using an internet link to upload your backup to a remote site or are you talking about tape vaulting where they turn up and pick up your tapes?

 

Ben

 

Turn up and pick up your tapes? I just take one home! (...sometimes)

[pete]

Regularly swap tapes with a neighbouring school? If they take one of yours, you'll store one of theirs?

 

Of course, this assumes you have encrypted backups or other methods in place to ensure data security and due diligence under data protection.

[CyberNerd]

For a while a mate of mine worked for the Human Genome Project, at MRC they said it was *faster* to put the backup tapes in the post to the US than it was to trasfer the backup over their (stupidly fast) internet connection to the US. 8O

[edie209]

This is not the perfect off site backup solution but this is what I have done. I bought a Buffalo TerraStation and located it in a building on the college site that is away from the rest of the site. The building is connected by 1 gig fibre and I backup to it every night. The Buffalo TerraStation is in a comms cab in that building so its locked away from anybody who fancies a little play. As I said not perfect but it works for me

[ind13]

my setup is a bit like edie209

ive got machine setup at the other side of the building, everything backs up to there,

once a week i copy the main backups to a external harddrive and store this off site (well in the boot of my car)

 

recently our local lea support (Ediss) have started trialing a backup solution for SIMS mainly aimed at the primary schools coz there renowed for not taking there backups off site. basically every evening the sims backup is ftp'd to them.

 

the main problem with any backup that involves human interaction ie taking things off site is that people forget.

[danIT]

What are the implications as far as a member of staff taking a backup off-site? a tape in the boot of my car or portable hard drive, what happens if it gets stolen, data protection etc?

[broc]

Probably not what you want to hear, but true offsite DR backup services can be very expensive, especially if you have a lot of data which needs to be copied quickly.

Similar to edie209, we have a 'DIY' DR server with half a dozen big SATA disks in it at the end of a 1gb fibre link to our sports hall. We back up around 200gb a night, to disks called MONDAY, TUESDAY, etc. We also backup MIS data to tape every night & every 1/2 term backup user data to tape which goes into a media rated fire safe. The user data on tape is kept for 2 years.

 

We also use SECONDCOPY for user data, copying to another server in the main server room. This is handy for when the students accidently delete files!

[MkII]

I know of a proffessional system that uses rsync which backs up 250Gb per night over a net connection - some scripting involved to copy over previous nights backup so that the difference is small [as rsync just updates changes] and lots of verifying of data.

[Geoff]

Using rsync here to backup a linux web server (runs Moodle). Only about 1Gb of data or so though.

[mary]

I looked into offsite backup but concluded we couldn't possibly due to the amount of data to bandwidth ratio.

If yuo could do it I'd just hire a server somewhere. rackspace or sumfing.

 

http://www.sitesolutions.com they are great. I use them for but of the server centre they have there. very secure, and reasonably priced. I would have probs recommending them.

[adent]

A quick comment about all this off-site and remote backup stuff. Don't forget to back up the Operating System and AD on a regular basis too.

 

The number of times I've been into a school to find really secure copies of the data, but no backups of the AD infrastructure is frightning.

 

Also - a backup is only as good as the restore - so test em regularly.... please!

[kylewilliamson]

Don't forget - on occasion those "fire rated backup safes" can heat up and melt the plastic!

 

We used IBM's TSM Express - it copies down onto its own harddrive, and then onto tape from there. Our tapes are stored at a locker at a self storage place.

 

Kyle

[limbo]

Just another warning aganist back up safes that someone in the fire service pointed out to me a few years ago.

 

Even if the safe manages to resist the fire, and not melt its contents, if it is a serious fire then the chances of being allowed back onto the site to retrieve the data are slim.

 

We currently use the "tapes in the boot of the car" method - although they do usually make it out of the car at the other end and into my underwear drawer!!

[adent]

Your best bet is to always keep the tapes physically seperate from the servers. Either off site or at the other end of the campus. The chances of both the servers and the tapes being destroyed are then minimised.

 

If I had a pound for the number of times I see tapes in a server room....

[GrumbleDook]

A simple backup regime on a daily basis ...

 

In the morning the lucky techie visits the server room ... does a cursory check to make sure that no lights are flashing that shouldn't be and to alarms are going off ... and then check that the aircon is actually on.

 

He/she/it (to be referred to as 'he' from now on as I don't care too much for going over the top with political correctness) goes to the relavent boxes that have been backing up over night. He removes the tapes and carefuly puts the tapes in for the backup tonight so that he will not forget to do it later in the mad rush to pack up and go home (late due to another last minute projector needing set up for some after-hours thing!).

 

This tape is put in his bag and his is the only bag that *must* be collected by whoever is in the office in the event of a fire. Once the bag is at home he removes the tape and places it carefaully with the previous 5 tapes ... the 6th tape he then brings back into school the following day to add back into the pool of tapes.

 

So ... we have ... 1 week of tapes at home (unless one is specifically requested for a restore) and 3 weeks in schools ... also in school is the one from the previous night ... this is done on 3 servers that do backups.

 

Weekly one of the backups does a system state.

The next night we have the OS

The following night the web server

 

and so on ... so that low changing servers are done weekly.

 

Every 4 weeks a tape is taken out of the cycle instead of being reused ... and this is kept for 1 year. Each year all data is backed up and taken off-site ... and kept for 7 years.

 

If you change your backup solution then the existing archive tapes from the year end are brought in, restored to a box and backed up again onto the new solution, keeing the old tape and tape drive (including drivers on CD and backup software).

 

If possible pay for an exams style cupboard at another school and keep these backups there ...

 

And don't forget to doucument whatever you do ... and have paper and electronic copies ...

 

The above is for a full backup each night, but can be adjusted to cater for incremental and differential by just including the extra tapes.

 

Backing up to disk and then to tape can mean that you don't have to bring tapes back in at all.

 

When documenting whatever you do keep in mind your disaster recovery policy. Ensure that there are clear guidelines as to how to get your system back up and running if you were starting from scratch. Not only is this good practice but can also be used again and again at other places of work (or shared in the wiki!)

 

As with many things ... there are areas of good practice with this ... but it will vary from school to school ... and will end up being like profiles ... there will be small differences even in the major differences!