2TB+ offsite backup solution

toastersoft

toastersoft

toastersoft

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Long time forum reader, but first post. Need a little help please!
Looking for the best way to backup 2TB of critical data offsite.

Around 50GB of new data added each week, not compressible so online backup is out of the picture.
Current plan is to move the data to a Synology 1512+ to allow for expansion without having to migrate to new drives each year.

Backups are only required once a day. Files are rarely changed but previous versions are needed in case of corruption/accidental deletion.
Ideally the solution would be to take the data container (disks/tapes) offsite at the end of the day and bring another set back in the next day for the following backup.

Thanks in advance and I hope there's someone out there with a brilliant solution I haven't thought of!
 
toastersoft said:
Long time forum reader, but first post. Need a little help please!
Looking for the best way to backup 2TB of critical data offsite.

Around 50GB of new data added each week, not compressible so online backup is out of the picture.
Current plan is to move the data to a Synology 1512+ to allow for expansion without having to migrate to new drives each year.

Backups are only required once a day. Files are rarely changed but previous versions are needed in case of corruption/accidental deletion.
Ideally the solution would be to take the data container (disks/tapes) offsite at the end of the day and bring another set back in the next day for the following backup.

Thanks in advance and I hope there's someone out there with a brilliant solution I haven't thought of!
Click to expand...

The way we do ours
Daily
Daily
Daily
Daily
Weekly #1- goes offsite on the monday and wont come back for a month.

Repeat for 4 weeks and replace the 4th "Weekly" backup with a "monthly", that goes off site and doesn't come back for a year.

Saves on taking tapes off site every day and worst case is you lose a weeks worth of data.
 
After your example, I googled related stuff and I think you've guided me in the right direction.

For a full backup I would need to be present to swap tapes, correct?

LTO4 is 800GB, so 3 tapes for my current data, and LTO5 is 1.5TB so two tapes. Any recommendation as to which drive/tapes to go for?

Thanks again.
 
LTO5 is 1.5TB native, so you could get 2TB+ on a single tape if your data compresses nicely (or not).

Details of LTO6 are starting to drift out - this article suggests 3TB native capacity.
 
Unfortunately the data won't compress so 1.5TB is probably about right.
Good to know LTO will be increasing though.

Just wondering if there is any way to solve this with disks, due to the £1200 tape drive cost. Is there any software/hardware out there which will perform a full backup split over multiple disks, then incrementally to a different disk each weekday etc?

I think I know how this might go, but got to ask a stupid question right?
 
toastersoft said:
Files are rarely changed
Click to expand...
Do a differential backup then, likely to be a couple of GB ?

Keep two copies of the full backup, one offsite, one onsite.
Do a restore occasionally to be sure the differential backup still looks like the live data

Windows server now does shadow copies IIRC so you can roll back previous versions of a file
 
using usb disks i'm guessing??
you can do that but standard practice is to use backup tapes because of the way they are constructed, and storage options. external harddisk are from what I've seen rarely encouraged. As i understand it Tape backups have redundancy built in to them so their more resilient to data loss through damage

mmmm its possible to back up your data off site via interweb you'd need a good upload link to do it though.
Edit, thinking about it you'd probably need a point to point 100mb link or better for the backup, if you do this dont ditch the tape backups.

our schedule in the office i something like

Tapes :
Monday to Thursday - incremental backups
Fridays - Full backups
Last Friday of the month is a full back up but retained for 3 months.
Note : all the tapes are supposed to be off site unless needed, were we use tapes we have an agreement with Iron mountain to collect and return tape each day.

Online:
We've stared using Iron Mountains LiveVault for our smaller offices were by its doing a continues back through out the day and night. which then replaces the need for Tapes as our primary backup source.

In one of our office we have an HP Overlan to spool the backup data over the weekend to allow the tape backups to finish when ever from the friday.
in this office we've probably got over 10TB of data to backup in one form or another. due to data size we dont use Live Vault for this office.

it doesn't sound like you have an Autoloader? as you mentioned you'd need to change the tapes your self manually? have a look at the following for your needs :

as a suggestion :
Serial Attached SCSI 2
http://www.misco.co.uk/Product/Q278529/HP-StorageWorks-1-8-G2-LTO-5-Tape-Autoloader

8Gb Fibre Channel
http://www.misco.co.uk/Product/172437/HP-StorageWorks-1-8-G2-LTO-5-Tape-Autoloader

Tapes :
http://www.misco.co.uk/product/188692/HP-LTO-5-Ultrium-10-Pack

Plus the software you'll need, any half decent backup software will allow you to split data over more than one volume.
Int h past we used : Symantec Backup Exec

as a note, the naming convention used on tapes is important as you'll want to label them in your backup program and physical media to make it easier to find them when restore time comes.

the two options are different connections to your server so you may also need to purchase an appropriate SCSI Card or fiber link card. Fiber would be recommended but all depends on your setup, and your bottle neck would possible then be the write speed of the tapes over the speed of your connection.

Two Questions : How important is your Data and how much are you prepared to spend to keep it safe?

Edit
i should point out i'm no expert so take what i've written with a good pinch of salt, i'm sure others have much more experience then my self
Rule one : always do a backup
rule two : you can never have to many backups!!!
 
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Wow that's a detailed post, thanks.

Think that may be a little overkill for what I need though!

I would like to do differential/incremental.

In future though when the amount of data I have is greater than an affordable hard disk, the full backup will have to be split over multiple disks.

What I need is some software that will let me do a full backup once a week split over 2 disks, then incrementally to a separate disk each day. Just can't seem to find it.

Would Backup Exec be the kind of thing I'm after then? Sorry if I've not been clear.
 
you can setup Symantec Backup Exec to split over more than one volume, you set it up so it backs up to an image instead of to tape and point the image to the hard disks, i've done this before when i had a problem with a tape drive but its not something i recommend. Writing data and the constant spin up and down of the hard disk + travel to and through not so good for them.

you'd probably need to set up two or three policy's in Symantec to tell it were to send the data to on which ever days your on.
as part of the policy you need to tell it if its doing an incremental of full backup
i.e. Policy 1 : Incremental : Run on Monday Wednesday : Destination Disk 1
Policy 2: Incremental : Run on Tuesday Thursday : Destination Disk 2
Policy 2: Full : Run on Friday : Destination Disk 3
as part of the policy you can setup retention and overwrite times to prevent losing data, but i'm not sure how that would work with disk backup

Only problem i can think of is if the drive letters for the usb drives change so if your unplugging and replugging them in you'll need to check this.

if your looking to do this on a budget and this is not a production system, depending on how important the data is to you you could have a look and and play with :
http://www.cobiansoft.com/cobianbackup.htm
it will give you a small flavor of what to expect
 
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Ok so rule disks out then.

I have zero experience with tapes.

At the moment all data is stored on a windows desktop.

What would I need to get a tape backup solution going in a Grandfather-Father-Son style of rotation? I.e. at the end of the week I have an incremental backup of each day, end of the month I have a backup of each week, and at the end of the year I have a backup from each month.

LTO-5 Tape drive
Backup software
Around 36 LTO-5 Tapes (currently have 2TB of data, so full backup will be 2 tapes)

Am I missing anything? This is only a small company so the cheapest reliable way possible is needed! Am willing to change tapes manually etc.

Just can't believe the headache once the data has outgrown two external HDDs rotating daily with incrementals on!

Thanks for your time on this, much appreciated.
 
toastersoft said:
Just can't believe the headache once the data has outgrown two external HDDs rotating daily with incrementals on!
Click to expand...
I'm still wondering why you don't use 3Tb rack mount hard drives :confused:
LTO drives are expensive, a pain to automate, safely store and provide staff cover for.
A rack of 3Tb drives are cheap, automated and you can duplicate them multiple times in multiple locations for added redundancy.

On big sites you can replicate the data to another building for on site redundancy in case of a fire.

Don't forget restoring LTO data takes hours, a hard drive is done in a tenth of that and doesn't need a LTO drive attached - think about what you would do if an LTO drive fails at the same time as your data.


btw. if going the LTO route you need a tape cleaner
 
Yep, as soon as the storage density goes up, LTO starts to get really expensive.

I can see it being useful in some organisations where they can chuck money at backup, but I doubt there is much difference in reliability between tape and an enterprise spec hard drive.

Actually the disk route lets you sneak in a few hourly backups just because you can.

Oh and I forgot the cost of a fireproof safe for the tapes, you still need to keep the onsite ones secure.
 
Bitslice, I think you'll find there is quite a difference in terms of life expectancy. I've seen MANY enterprise disks that don't make 3 years, also whole batches will begin failing very rapidly at the 4-5 year mark. Tape is good for many years provided it is stored in good conditions (eg at Iron Mountain etc)

/Edit: I've always been lucky that I've worked in enterprise environments where they are willing to "chuck money" at decent backups. We do go through around 50 LTO4 tapes a week and have many TB of Data domain D2D backup capacity though.....
 
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