Backing up your data - what's the best method?

[boolyn]

Some would say that backing up to tape is now an obsolescent process and the best form of backup is to another hard disk off site or online backups over the internet.

Or, if that is not practical, to a writeable DVD drive. Whilst tape might not be the most modern way of backing up to DVD isn't necessarily the most reliable either.

All schools should definitely be backing up their data somewhere but what are your views on the best method?

 

Thanks

Dave

[jamesreedersmith]

Most people now use a D2D or D2D2T system.

 

Seach for backup on here and you will find lots of threads about all apsects of this.

[elsiegee40]

It depends on your school. We're small - just 2 servers with 4 buildings. If the one with the servers went up in flames, it would not affect the other 3. Our decision was therefore geographical!

 

We dumped tape and backup to NAS. The 2 NAS devices are in the building furthest from the servers.

[dhicks]

Some would say that backing up to tape is now an obsolescent process and the best form of backup is to another hard disk off site or online backups over the internet.

 

Many schools have multiple buildings, making an "offsite" backup system quite practical and affordable. Simply have a backup server in a cabinet in a separate building somewhere in the school and either do real-time volume mirroring or daily syncs with your main servers.

Edited November 9, 2011 by dhicks

[Steve21]

Some would say that backing up to tape is now an obsolescent process

 

We backup to tape and HDD. Problem with doing it to DVD etc is the small size of the discs, 10 tapes is what (400/800) 8TB compressed, Try doing it by dvd

 

As with dhicks, our backup system is in another building in our school, so even if the main building did burn down we've still got the latest HDD/tapes in another building.

 

Steve

[dgsmith]

Our new server uses new groundbreaking technology for us.. RDX (effectively hard drive cartridges in an ejectable drive)! Still, every other server still uses tape due to upgrade costs and unable to justify when the tapes still serve the purpose.

[boolyn]

thank everyone who replied.

[glennda]

I use disk to disk and then every other week disk to disk in a third block so that if fire burns down even the first and second block I still have data! Currently looking into the possibility of doing remote backups to a remote school.

[cpjitservices]

Windows Server backup to a samba share with TB's of storage, and another server which the samba share replicates to.

 

RAID 1 across all disks

[Oaktech]

we are out of tape space essentially and in the process of trying to get budget for a san solution, but we go disk - disk - tape atm. our tapes are in a fire safe in a geographically seperate location to the back up system. we figure if the safe goes, the disks probably won't, and if it all goes there won't be a school left to restore for.

[IanT]

In my previous place we were running Backup Exec, jobs would run to disk then duplicate to tape - worked well.

[Domino]

D2D2T currently, with tapes sent off site to a secure data storage facility, on a twice weekly pickup/return rota

 

However we're gonna replicate data from our disk backup system to our Boston office, and vice versa, in the near future. So it's be D2D2D2T then :-)

[quietriot1983]

I backup to another PC (Technician's PC, with a big slave drive,) and also to another PC solely for backups in a separate part of the building. My argument is that if the whole place burnt down, the kids' word documents would be the least of our worries.

[3s-gtech]

I backup to another PC (Technician's PC, with a big slave drive,) and also to another PC solely for backups in a separate part of the building. My argument is that if the whole place burnt down, the kids' word documents would be the least of our worries.

 

Coursework/important data? If you don't backup your student data that is all of your worries, right there. It's not just fire or flood - what if the discs die?

[SHimmer45]

nightly backups of user data to another server (just a simple xcopy script)

other server related data is on another box.

Exchange database is backed up to another server again but then duplicated on a weekly basis onto a tape (DAT72 based system symantec backup)

 

small NAS boxs are cheap enough to buy and give piece of mind.

[quietriot1983]

Coursework/important data? If you don't backup your student data that is all of your worries, right there. It's not just fire or flood - what if the discs die?

We're a primary, so it's only the SIMS data that is that important.

[matt40k]

We backup to tape, we're now looking at RedStor for schools. Seems alot less problematic and safer.

[gshaw]

D2D2T here... Veeam backups to disk so we can recover all VMs and data but also archive to tape weekly so we have data in an separate, offline media as well.

 

Even with replicated NAS appliance I'd still be a bit nervy as *something* could in theory go round wiping all your file stores if it was nasty enough. Guess it depends on your paranoia level and what media gives you the warm fuzzies