3TB Backups on a budget.

Lithium

Lithium

Lithium

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29 Oct 2002
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806
I'm doing a bit of work for a friend of mine helping him setup his new office.

They've got a 3TB of data on a Terastation III that they want backed up.

I've already put in place a cheap ML110 G5 that takes a copy of the Terastation on regular intervals so their data is reasonably safe from a failure of the Terastation. The question is how to get this data off-site to protect from fire/flood/theft and the likes.

Working in the hosting industry I've always dealt with high speed links so moving huge volumes of data is a piece of ****. But in an office with a ADSL2+ link? Forget it!

So what are the options? Seems to me hard-disk is the only way. I figure I could rig the ML110 with a trayless hotswap bay for them to slide a bunch of 2TB disks into but they don't have anyone technical on hand so it needs to be really simple.

(I know I could make something up with Robocopy but I'm thinking about proper backup archiving software)

Is there software out there that can do something like that simply? Monday morning they load a drive in, it alerts when to insert the next disk and then they take their 2 disks away out of the office. Repeat the procedure next week with a new set of disks etc..
 
Whats to the volume of files moved/changed/created in a day? Whats the speed on the ASDL line? Also what wrong with NTbackup?

Andy
 
I've looked at crashplan for my windows home server.

Take the initial backup to an an external hard drive then take that home and hook it up.
You then schedule it every night to transfer over the file changes.
 
There are plenty of online backup services, like wonder_lander suggested, that work by sending file changes but for 3tb it wont be cheap
 
Got to be tape.
Ultrium 4 and an HP 1/8 G2 1U autoloader
Setup tapes so you rotate bundles of them weekly or nightly.
Prolly be 3.5 to 4k tops plus backup software cost.
 
Given the fact they're using a buffalo NAS and an ML110, I doubt the budget would stretch to an autoloader plus software
 
Get a second NAS and do an incremental backup from one to the other using robocopy or synctoy or somesuch to replicate the two sides. then off-site the second NAS unti the morning. In any fire-drill, have a step to grab the second NAS (and maybe the first one too) on the way out.
 
Tape is what you would traditionally use but its expensive, in drive cost, tape costs, time, effort etc etc etc.

Mike has the right idea, get a second NAS device and do a robocopy locally, then move it offsite and do incremental updates every day or whatever time increment suits best for the bandwidth you have.

The initial copy is the hardest. Problem is that all the online backup companys want stupid money for TB backups, Your talking hundreds if not thousands of pounds
 
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If there's the initial 3TB of data, but it's not moving much (or if it's just slowly increasing), then I'd suggest trying to locate a small system offsite. Assuming you start your backup run at 8pm, and then it must stop for 6am thus allowing the backup to run despite people working late / starting early then that means you've got 10 hours. Assume an upload speed of 1mbit (you CAN get 2.5mbit with Be broadband's upload plus, but 1mbit's a fair estimate).

At 1mbit, per minute you'll transfer:

(1/8) * 60 = 7.5 megabytes.

Ten hours is 10*60 minutes, which gives us:

7.5 * 600 = 4500mb.


So, assuming they're routinely changing less than approx 4.5gig per day, a (LONG) overnight backup via ADSL would be feasable. You must realise that these are incredibly guessed numbers; you'll need to check out what their ISP is and what upload speeds you can get.



Equally, ask more details about the data. If the majority's static, but then there's a small amount of often-changing data, then you might look at an online backup company for just the often-changing data, and then a more simple approach involving portable hard drives for the more static stuff.
 
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