Backup Solutions......

[mcnallyfc]

Hi all

 

Looking for input on various backup solutions. Our current setup is as follows:

 

We have 4 Physical servers, DC1, DC2, DC3, and Admin.

 

DC1 - AIT 3 100gb Tape backup for 90gb Data. Full backups run nightly

DC2 - AIT 3 100gb Tape backup for 60gb Data. Full backups run nightly

DC3 - Tandberg 500gb and 300gb Tapes backup for 450gb data. Full backup run Fri night (takes 15hrs) then differentials run during week.

Admin - LTO Ultrium 200gb Tape for 120gb Data. Full backups run nightly

 

At moment we looking at replacing DC1 but regardless of this DC3 backup needs to be looked at asap as well as general backup solutions.

 

What simple backup options do people run? They do now do 1TB Tandberg tapes but as it takes 15hrs to run backups its not a solution. Seems the tandberg

 

So im starting to look at NAS drives for backup, based on current setup what would be a good way to implement this? Or any other backup solution on a budget?

 

Ideally any new system would need to take into account the future plan of moving DC3 onto DC1 (with a bit of house keeping on data) and introduction of VM's.

 

Thanks

[EduTech]

What I have done in the past and i don't know if this will be appropriate for yourselves, i guess it depends on how much data you have but think about this.

 

Purchase a 2 Bay QNAP (x2 2TB Drives), Using Symantec System Recovery Backup all of your servers to that NAS, Using the Built in Software on the QNAP you can then do an External Copy to a Hard Drive to take off site. It works very well and you just plug it into the USB on the Back it registers the hard drive and if you have mutiple and you register them it will keep them all in sync for you.

 

QNAP Systems, Inc. ( Products - NAS )- Quality Network Appliance Provider

 

Obviously Depends on how much data you have, but it should work fine for you. Team the 2 NIC's together to give you a 2GB Link I don't think that will give you any problems.

 

I Say System Recovery, But to be honest if you had Backup Exec just use the Backup to Folder Option.

 

It's just a simple way forward that is not very expensive, obviously there are loads of ways to backup data just about finding one that fits your environment. (just a thought anyway)

 

James.

Edited September 14, 2010 by EduTech

[smalls001]

I would use a set of external hard drives on a weekly rotation or a NAS drive. Buffalo do a 4TB Nas drive for About £400-£500.

[mcnallyfc]

My issue is with the nas - is that on a 10 day schedule - the space needed to hold this for all 4 servers.

 

Approaching 800gb of data to be backup nightly - thats 8TB over the 10 day period.

 

I want to limit it to 5 days which would mean a 6TB NAS device would do but teachers etc not keen.

[EduTech]

Can you not do incrementals throughout the week to make the backups smaller?

 

James.

[Midget]

My suggestion would be to use DC1 when it gets replaced as a backup server with a load of new HDDs and get either the large Tandberg or an autoloader.

 

In the evening backup the servers to this machine and then during the day you can write it to tape.

[mcnallyfc]

Can you not do incrementals throughout the week to make the backups smaller?

 

James.

 

Yeah could be option - school very set in ways though they feel full is best! I will endeavour to try and change them though, i would have thought the cost difference alone for the extra hardware would change their views but not so.

 

Im going to recommend a 4TB Nas drive setup with then a couple of 2 TB external drives to take off site.

[mcnallyfc]

My suggestion would be to use DC1 when it gets replaced as a backup server with a load of new HDDs and get either the large Tandberg or an autoloader.

 

In the evening backup the servers to this machine and then during the day you can write it to tape.

 

Could do - interesting option but i wouldnt want to re-use DC1 in that capacity, may look at similar setup but by decomissioning dc2 or dc3 onto new dc1 and then using one of them as the backup server....

[dhicks]

Looking for input on various backup solutions.

 

Get a decent-sized case (we got an Antec 1200, but whatever is around will do) and stuff it full of 2TB drives, configure them as a RAID-5 software RAID array, use rsync to copy files from your files server on a nightly basis and have a de-duplicating script run on the backup server during the day to reduce file space used. No propriatory backup solution, so files can be shared as standard file shares so you can simply mount each user's backup area as a drive on their profile.

 

2TB drives are around £120 each, a case, motherboard, processor and RAM are around £300, so you should be able to get around 10TB of storage for around £1,000-ish.

 

--

David Hicks

[Midget]

unless the nas fails or catches fire natch.

 

 

I hate tape, but it's very important in a worst case scenario. I've used HDDs as Tapes before, but obviously you have to take care with handling

[DMcCoy]

Tapes are too slow. NAS is convenient.

 

Thats all a bit relative though isn't it. I currently do D2D2T because I can't pull files from the server quick enough to stop my LTO4 shoe shining. Mostly this is due to the old Apple XRAID having low sustained write speed. Replacement servers have gone in this week though, main storage soon, so I may try D2T again.

 

Hardware encryption is nice too.