How do you backup your Server(s)?

[elsiegee40]

We have a single HP Server supporting the entire school - staff, pupils and office. Backups of key data are done nightly onto 80GB tape; the job is run overnight from a shadow copy.

 

This was fine until the drive failed and two replacements later we've succeeded in getting 1 backup last Thursday and since then we've had failure as the Tape has failed to Mount very close to the end of the backup... no the tape isn't full.

 

It strikes me that sometime 80GB won't be enough space and that schools with bigger servers than ours must have backup solutions. So what do you do? Do you take backups offsite?

 

We are a tiny school and have a very limited budget, which will affect what we do. However our MIS data is vital, particularly as we are independent and therefore a business. But I've had it in the neck so much about the backups I need some ideas!

 

Lin

 

EDIT

Since this thread we have moved to a 2TB LaCie installed in another building on the opposite end of the site to the server. It's brilliant! We take a monthly tape backup which goes offsite for belt and braces!

Edited February 6, 2008 by elsiegee40

[monkey_boy]

LTO2 or NAS

 

 

hth

[zag]

Backupexec + a removable hard disk. Pretty simple stuff really, but its very effective. Both for data and system states.

[mrforgetful]

A couple of years ago we spent about 8 grand on a dedicated backup server with LTO2 tape drive using Retrospect.

 

It would back up all data from our servers overnight to the hard disks then copy them to tape through the day.

 

We then bought 5 new servers.

 

Within a few months we were having to select what to and, what not to back up.

It got so that it took so long to do the backup it wouldn't finish in one night, then it wouldn't fit on one tape no matter what we tried but there was noone here to swap it over.

 

We now backup to external hard disks and use ntbackup. Each server has it's own 500Gb drive (enough for all storage they can hold) connected via USB, it transfers over Friday night and goes offsite on Monday morning.

 

I think with the implementation of Shadow Copies your only really looking for Disaster Recovery with a backup, and weekly is regular enough for people to not complain when the school's burnt down anyway!

[localzuk]

We have a 2TB nas box running backup exec 11d with clients running on all 4 of our servers. This backs up nightly (differential), weekly (full), monthly (full), quarterly (full) and yearly (full).

 

We also have a job which runs weekly to a tape drive so an offsite backup can be made (we alternate a set of tapes between 2 members of staff). We are considering swapping the tape drive for a set of robust external portable hard disks though.

 

A full backup of all data comes to around 180GB at the moment here, so the tape backup takes a long while (it is an AIT3 Turbo drive).

 

For the amount of data you're using I would recommend a similar setup (probably not as large). Some form of NAS box plus some proper software to do it all for you.

[mrforgetful]

Unless you're backing up SQL servers don't waste money on third party software, ntbackup performs fine and is even better at Exchange in some cases.

[elsiegee40]

I've just had a few minutes to read these. I must admit, I'm lookingat the External Hard Drive possibility - I do this at home. they're small enough to take offsite easily these days.

 

Lin

[plexer]

Ntbackup with backupassist as the setup gui to a 1.5tb raid5 nas.

 

Full and diff during the week. Full on main server is 180'ish GB

 

Ben

[Bestbett]

If you only have one and you have an AD setup i would buy a PC, throw 2003 on it and set up a redundant dc, gc. This will load balance for you and if your dc breaks your not totally hosed.

Also we use a freedom9 4020. Which is a little NAS about the size of a toaster. You can put 4 hds in it up to 750gig each (3TB). It can do raid5 or raid5 with a failover and you can split it up to do Bare Metal backups and normal NAS operations. All in with HDs it cost us about $2,200USD. And you can put USB 2.0 devices into it so we backup very important data to usb HDs for home storage.

[sidewinder]

We have a Dell Poweredge 1420 with 3 x 500GB SATA disks in RAID5 for backups, giving us 1TB of space.

On that I have Backup Exec 9.1 installed (hope to move to 11d soon) and all daily differential backups, SIMS backups and system state backups are stored on there

 

The weekly full backup goes straight onto an LTO-3 tape drive - at the minute a full backup is about 500GB so we still fit on one tape, but I do wish Id bought an autoloader now

 

6 week tape library, all stored in a fire safe in a terrapin at the other end of the site. Not quite 'off-site' but it is so far away its unlikely a fire in the server room would ever reach it

[bossman]

We have a huge cabinet on wheels which houses our servers so to back it up we just push it from the front and it backs up hehe!

 

Sorry just couldn't resist

 

We use both tapes and NAS plus usb portable hard drives to take off site. (tapes and NAS backup through the night, NAS to USB through the day when the NAS servers are not operational).

[tosca925]

Ntbackup to a huge NAS box.

[Ric_]

I have a server running Retrospect that pulls all the data off the other servers and dunps it onto LTO2 tape using a Tanberg LTO2 Autoloader. I like how this works.

[chrbb]

External hard drive ntbackup done during day taken home that night. Also tape drive only holds data though, done overnight and stored at school in safe.

[Kyle]

I have a server running Retrospect that pulls all the data off the other servers and dunps it onto LTO2 tape using a Tanberg LTO2 Autoloader.

 

How much data does the tapes hold? I heard this LTO mentioned today by one of the LEA techies and I'd never heard of it :oops:

[Ric_]

@Kyle: Handy little table at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LTO_tapes - 200GB native (The autoloader holds 7 tapes with the cleaning tape in the eighth slot).

[eean]

Another vote for external hard drives - at £70 for 250GB (and that was last year), it's pretty good VFM. I fit about 3 full backups and a week's worth of incremental on a drive. I have 2 and try to rotate every week or so (just curric, not admin).

The only thing I'd suggest it that you consider using Firestreamer-RM. It works with NTbackup or any backup tool (basically creates a virtual tape drive). You can then mount files to the tape drive, or use the hard drive as if it were a tape. The advantage of this is that it can compress AND encrypt the backup, something ntbackup can't do. As the 'off site' backups live in the boot of my car, I felt encryption was important.

It will also email you reports etc... It's only £30.

[kylewilliamson]

We've got a similar system to Ric - we've used IBM's Tivoli Storage Manager Express for the job - it does our SQL Server too.

 

It then copies down to tape and we've again got a Lto2 autoloader.

 

Kyle

[john]

LTO3 tape for one site with NT backup

DAT72i at another with Backup Exec 11d

LTO1 at another with Backup Exec 10d

[craiglay]

Hehe, DDS3 or DDS4 tape depending on the school or DVDRW for some (I work for 6 cluster primary's) Use Tapeware for tape and NTBackup for DVD.

 

I'm looking at a NAS for my largest primary though

 

Craig

[k-strider]

I used to use DDS tapes but i was swapping four or five just backing up all the important data

 

so now what i do like most it seams is backup the servers to Portable HDDs using NTBackup. I take full server backup every half terms and then taken off site. For the rest of the time over the weekend all the important data is backed up onto a server located not in the rack. Its backed up using NT Backup and Backup Assist, which is really good at scheduling NTBackups it and its cheap.

 

I looked into LTO but came to the conclusion that its cheaper and easier to use External Disks.

[Guest kerrymoralee9280]

Our backups took a turn for the worst when we got a couple of new servers. We have 400gb tapes which is not enough to hold it all. Thing is, we didn't want to move away from tapes because with a NAS, all you need is a HHD failure. Anyway, we back up all staff and student data to tape every night, and the Terminal Server goes onto the NAS1 box through NTBackup.

 

We had an old system lying around (P4) so decided to buy 4 x 400gb HDD's and install them with a software RAID (5). This has left us with about 1.2TB. Now, every Friday we get our normal backup to tape aswell but also a complete backup to NAS2. It wasn't too quick on 10/100 so we went and bought a cheap Gig NIC. Now, it works a treat, and although it still takes a couple of days to back up, that kind of time is fine over the weekend when I'm out in the sunny garden without a care in the world.

 

Oh, we still get a special backup if anything is going to change majorly on the network, an off site back up and a back up that sits in our fire proof safe at school.

[nathan]

We have a Dell Poweredge 1420 with 3 x 500GB SATA disks in RAID5 for backups, giving us 1TB of space.

On that I have Backup Exec 9.1 installed (hope to move to 11d soon) and all daily differential backups, SIMS backups and system state backups are stored on there

 

The weekly full backup goes straight onto an LTO-3 tape drive - at the minute a full backup is about 500GB so we still fit on one tape, but I do wish Id bought an autoloader now

 

6 week tape library, all stored in a fire safe in a terrapin at the other end of the site. Not quite 'off-site' but it is so far away its unlikely a fire in the server room would ever reach it

 

are fire proof safe's worth it, i mean they may prevent them from burning, but they sure as hell dont stop them from melting.

[benny84w]

Ours is all off site, with a third party, it's great never need to worrie about tapes and space etc and if the school burns down its all safe still!

[mrforgetful]

are fire proof safe's worth it, i mean they may prevent them from burning, but they sure as hell dont stop them from melting.

 

Plus they're only FireSafe for a certain amount of time, usually an hour or two, will the fire/heat be gone by then?