Offsite data backup

[Buy-Focus]

Hi All

 

One of our schools (a West Midlands Secondary) is looking for information on offsite data backup. Who to use, how much to pay, what to look out for....any thoughts?

 

We will attribute any (sensible) answers to EduGeek.

 

Thanks

[RTFM]

I've had some quotes which just come to stupid figures.

 

For 1tb space (which actually isnt enough for what we need) I got one quote of £2500 a month.

 

There was a number of options though;

 

• Put your own server in the data centre and pay for rack space and bandwidth.
   
  
• Buy drive space and pay for that (usually per gb) and bandwidth.
   
  
• But a dedicated line to the data centre and one of the above.
  

 

The problem with offsite backup;

 

Upload speed. To upload 1tb (for example) over the internet and then switch to differential is going to take weeks. You can look into putting the data onto a drive, sending it off to the data centre then switching to upload differentials.

 

If worst came to worst and you needed a full distaster recovery, the length of time it would take to re-download the amount of data you have uploaded simply wouldnt be feasible. Making having the data stored offsite irrelevent.

 

 

Just some things to consider which we encountered when looking into this.

 

If you find anything though please comment on it as I think offsite backup is something more and more schools are having to look into.

[kmount]

Hi All

 

One of our schools (a West Midlands Secondary) is looking for information on offsite data backup. Who to use, how much to pay, what to look out for....any thoughts?

 

We will attribute any (sensible) answers to EduGeek.

 

Thanks

 

Hi there,

 

Some questions I'd be asking..

 

1) How much space do they need?

2) How fast is their upstream internet connection (to calculate how much they will be able to push in a 'backup' period)

3) How fast is their downstream as highlighted above for the ability to restore large amounts of data for DR.

4) Would they be better with a service which takes tapes off site so large chunks of data can be retrieved via tape delivery?

 

It really depends upon what the existing infrastructure and whether this off site back up is for DR solely or as a means of augmenting an existing solution where the off site stuff is belt and braces.

 

Oh, and be aware of any laws that may be applicable if storing the data outside of the UK (or even internally really.... stick with companies who are known for this).

 

Some of the LA bods will be able to advise better I think on the laws etc.

[Buy-Focus]

Thanks RTFM and Kim thats great feedback, we will pass it on

[Soulfish]

I have looked into using Amazon S3 (and the Rackspace version of S3) for data backup offsite before. When you combine it with something like Jungle Disk you get the encryption and incremental backups. It's still not cheap though (many thousands a year for around 1tb of data).

 

One option we've been thinking about is building a storage server and seeing if another school would be willing to stick it in their server room. Advantages of this is that we could get the initial big data dump done here, and as all schools within our LEA are connected it (hopefully!) shouldn't be too difficult to setup an incremental backup routine from a backup server located within our server room.

[reggiep]

What are the chances of speaking to a nearby friendly school and plonking a NAS box in their site?

Then using something like RSync to backup to it?

 

I have been playing with our backup software (Backup Assist) and I have had full backups running over the internet to a remote NAS box.

 

Not sure what the legal implications would be on this.

[RTFM]

What are the chances of speaking to a nearby friendly school and plonking a NAS box in their site?

Then using something like RSync to backup to it?

 

I have been playing with our backup software (Backup Assist) and I have had full backups running over the internet to a remote NAS box.

 

Not sure what the legal implications would be on this.

 

I forgot to mention this is how we are hoping to solve our problem, sending data down Fibre to a near by Primary school and chucking a server in there.

[nicholab]

Disk would not work for us as I know we have about 40TB worth of backup off site here. We use LTO 4 tape and then are tapes are stored off site.