Need some help with a server backup system!

Hey all,

The office is relocating, and i need some assistance with server backups etc... i was originally given a budget for servers/workstations/laptops etc... and just managed to squeeze in what we need. However after completeing the budget report i realized there was no money left for backup system, so i managed to squeeze some more money from the big man.

Now heres the problem. ive only got £2000 :/

luckily i only have 4-5 servers to backup

with around 4TB data capacity, and we are no where near full yet. But i would possibly like to have the option of having multiple backups, something like 1 taken weekly, and 1 taken and overwritten each day.

for this i was thinking with such a small budget to go some sort of enterprise freenas route. maybe with hotswappable drives that i can take off site(so 2 sets of the same drives, 1 backing up whilst the yesterday one is offsite.)

What do you guys think, any other way i can go with this.

Angelos

Tape > Platter based storage.

£2,000 is a tight budget though. What kinds of servers do you need to back up? Are they all Windows based? SBS? Exchange? SQL?

1st server, i want to do a simple image kinda backup, its DNS,DHCP etc... stuff that wont change and if it does ill re image.

2nd server is the big bad exchange server, which will be the main concern.

3rd server once again needs backing up, its our ACT Database (SQL)

and finally is our web server(will probs just do a weekly rsync or something.

But any advice will be good advise, due to the size of budget.

We might eventually add some sort of sharepoint or collaboration software but thats in the pipes.

Angelos

As paradigm says, Tape will suit you best.
Best bet will be to designate a box as backup server and stick a tape drive into it then have the other boxes backup to that.
Word of warning with excahnge and SQL to tape: It's very slow on full sets and often costs more for a special agent (Which I would definitely advise for exchange).
SQL you might get around it by running scheduled maintenance tasks to backup the database and dump the .bak files on another server (most likely the backup box) and back them up to tape from there. Which is more hassle for restoring but more budget friendly as you don't need an SQL agent on that machine.

Depending on how much storage you have knocking about you could maybe do 'B2D2T' Which involves storing short term backups on your backup server then dumping them to tape in batches. This will make your daily backups run faster and more autonomously - no need to change tapes mid job, which you likely will need to with >4TB of data. Though most of the other advantages of B2D are lost if the server cannot be physically (and preferably geographically) separated from the ones it's backing up.

tl;dr - 2 grand is a tight budget, probably too tight for a complete DR solution. I'd probably advise above all pick a solution based upon how well it protects your data, then get pricing, THEN go ask for the money. DR is somewhere where you really can't tighten your belt because lost data is lost business. A lot of smaller businesses do go under after floods/fires. Cheaping out on DR has a big part to play in that.

Hey THanks for your answer, you are right my budget is tight. and i think the powervaults, which i was looking at are a bit out of budget, if you start including things like backupexec etc... What i was thinking of currently, is to use something like handybackup, to backup images of every server and workstation over the gig network to 1 of 2 synology SMB diskstations(rated for 160mb/sec read/write, 1 of the diskstations will be a weekly backup, which will be located offsite on a 100Mbps dedicated line and the other will be on the gig network taking a daily image of every server.

How does that sound to you, until i can beg for more money, as ive been told NO

Many THanks

Angelos

That changes things. If you have 100meg at your disposal then disk to disk works well. Because it's fast automated and the off site nature makes it resillient. Using differential backups there's no reason not to do daily to the remote site as well.

I'd still pick a server and use it as a central hub for backups, mostly for saving costs. 1x Backupexec and 4x agent licenses usually works out a tad cheaper than 5x full package licenses.

Looks fine on paper though. Duplicating the backups is good for resiliency and speed of restore, so you're barking up the right tree there. How they're duplicated can be tweaked to get best network performance.

thanks, yeh luckily in singapore, the net is fantastic, can get 1gbps speed for pennies compared to UK, that 100meg line is costing something like £150/month so yeh, i guess couple of offsite disks etc.. would be good , thanks again matey. and yeh ill probably squeeze in another server with the remaining cash as with both synology stations im only at around £1300 so can fit a nice T310 or something in so act a backup server.

150/month...... I think ours are costing treble that for point to point, about 800-1200/month for 100/100 to the web depending who you go with and where you are Still a long way to go here then.