Backup Solution for a small business?

Dark_Angel · 27 Jun 2007 at 17:17

I have a client who is looking for a reliable backup solution, that isn't going to cost the earth.

Would tape drives be the best solution, or woud it be simpler to simply use USB hard drives or something? Obviously we need to schedule the backups on a daily, weekly and monthly basis.

Anyone have a good suggestion?

Burnsy2023 · 27 Jun 2007 at 17:31

How much data is needed to be backed up?

Generally I would suggest tape as it's pretty much the industry standard, but it can be quite expensive.

Burnsy

Dark_Angel · 27 Jun 2007 at 17:35

burnsy2023 said:
How much data is needed to be backed up?

Generally I would suggest tape as it's pretty much the industry standard, but it can be quite expensive.

Burnsy

sorry, that was my mistake I should have said.

Around 6 GB on one server, and around the same on another server. All of data isn't really important enough to backup, but those files are the ones that are crucial enough so we can't lose.

Basically, we need to make a daily backup, a weekly backup and a monthly backup.

So monday - thrusday it backups everyday, friday it backs ups for the week, until the 4th friday of the month, where it does a monthly, We want to keep the weekly and monthly ones, but we don't care so much about the day to day ones, and was planning on rotating them on a 2 weekly basis or something.

meths · 27 Jun 2007 at 19:26

Dark_Angel said:
sorry, that was my mistake I should have said.

Around 6 GB ...snip...

A dual layered DVD RW holds more than that.

Edit: Not so sure you can get re-writable dual layered discs now. Aww well.

Energize · 27 Jun 2007 at 20:33

Can you get dual layer dvd-ram disks?

Dvd backup, flash memory or an external hdd is best for this.

Dark_Angel · 27 Jun 2007 at 20:39

Energize said:
Can you get dual layer dvd-ram disks?

Dvd backup, flash memory or an external hdd is best for this.

The company I am working with and myself are leaning towards a hard drive (a USB one) that is some how scheduled to backup in the times I mentioned above, and then a DVD Dual layer is burned each week with the data that is contained.

That way, we figure it is the cheapest and best way of doing it. Tape drives would be ok, but I figure there is to much cost involved.

Does anyone have a suggestion of which program would be best to schedule the program to backup to the removable USB drive?

Thanks by the way all, this is very helpful. I have never really setup backups before, I usually do standard IT and am supposed to be there for Web/Graphic Design :eek:

PAz · 27 Jun 2007 at 21:57

A SBS backup I did was a daily backup to an external HDD taken off site at the end of the each day.

I also scheduled another daily backup to the CCTV server which was also in the office just incase.

Just use ntbackup to schedule the jobs.

MNuTz · 27 Jun 2007 at 22:09

Not thought about one of these online backup services?

One of my old companies had their system back itself up every night at 7pm, however,when a fire gutted the entire building they lost everything including the backups.

Thank god i had one at home that was 3 weeks old.

jabroni_83 · 28 Jun 2007 at 09:03

the company i work for use Symantec Backup Exec. I've just taken over responsibility for the backups and although BE can be a bit buggy sometimes, it does the job and is pretty easy to use.
not sure how much it costs tho. i know you get licenses for whatever servers you want to backup - so cost increases as the size of your business does, but i'm not sure on setup costs.
you could always use windows backup (assuming your using windows)

TheKnat · 28 Jun 2007 at 09:28

Remember whatever the backup solution you choose is, you need to make sure that the media is taken off site every day.

What you could do is a maxiture of both as the cost of an external HDD is neglibable. I personally would do a backup-to-disk first and then duplicate this data to a tape, which can be taken offsite. This way you've got the protection in the event of a fire and also can perform quick restores if they are needed.

When we first put in our companies backup solution we went for 2 LTO tape auto loaders (you could use the single drive versions as you don't have loads of data), one of which backed the data up off the server and then the other copied the data off the original set of tapes. We then kept one copy on site (to perform restores) and then sent one copy off site (for protection).

I would go for a 4 week cycle (if your budget allows) with one set of Friday tapes a month being your 'archive' set of tapes which stay alive forever. Then you just re-cycle over the other tapes when the 4 week period is over. This would mean you would need to replace 1 tape a month, but the cost for them isn't too prohibitive especially now LTO4 is out.

buachille · 28 Jun 2007 at 20:57

Does anyone have a suggestion of which program would be best to schedule the program to backup to the removable USB drive?

well whether you use tape or disk you should use retrospect professional. i have absolutely no doubts about recommending this to you. we run a business and we have 130 gig that we have to keep backed up. we do it with retrospect and it is superb. don't expect to set it up in 15 minutes though. you have to put in some graft but then everything is easy after that.

JayMax · 28 Jun 2007 at 21:11

It all depends upon your budget but you could pick up a DDS3 or DDS4 Drive for <£50 at an auction. The tapes will be a lot easier to take off site than an external drive - which the users will get sick of doing imo.
Veritas, your looking at £300+ last time I bought one iirc. Most of the free stuff is not for business use. ntbackup is probably uour best bet.

m4cc45 · 28 Jun 2007 at 21:17

I personally wouldn't recommend a hard-drive backup. Mainly as they can fail at any time and if your data is valuable then it isn't worth the risk. They are also easily broken and targetable by thieves (thieves are less likely to steal a tape than a hard-drive).

A tape backup system, as already mentioned, is the preferable solution. You could run Windows Backup on there but if you did have the money Symantec Backup Exec is the industry standard (although it may be overkill) you could get the SBS version of Backup Exec for around £2-300.

The scheduling isn't a problem - for the amount of data that you're backing up it maybe easier to do a full backup every day.

M.

Energize · 28 Jun 2007 at 21:50

JayMax said:
The tapes will be a lot easier to take off site than an external drive - which the users will get sick of doing imo.

Eh? Plug in front usb port, backup, then uplug. Doesn't get any easier than that.

m4cc45 said:
I personally wouldn't recommend a hard-drive backup. Mainly as they can fail at any time and if your data is valuable then it isn't worth the risk.

Somehow I doubt all the raided hard drives and the backup drive are going to fail at the same time and lets face it tape isn't exactly indestructable and degrades with use. For the price of a tape solution, you could have multiple hdds, dvds and flash backups.

buachille · 28 Jun 2007 at 22:58

Somehow I doubt all the raided hard drives and the backup drive are going to fail at the same time and lets face it tape isn't exactly indestructable and degrades with use. For the price of a tape solution, you could have multiple hdds, dvds and flash backups.

good point!!

HEADRAT · 28 Jun 2007 at 23:09

Energize said:
Somehow I doubt all the raided hard drives and the backup drive are going to fail at the same time and lets face it tape isn't exactly indestructable and degrades with use. For the price of a tape solution, you could have multiple hdds, dvds and flash backups.

But there nothing to stop the RAID controller going POP! and corrupting the RAID or overwriting the data, or somebody accidentally delete online data.

I wouldn't trust a backup to any online spinning media.

HEADRAT

teaboy5 · 28 Jun 2007 at 23:13

HP Dat 72 backup drive around 270 +

Backup Exec - Around 240 for a standard copy

Pack of 10 tapes

Daily backups 4 tapes needed

Weekly - 4 tapes needed; one for each friday

Also its a good idea to do a test restore with tape at least once a mouth, as the backup may seems like it working, but when you restore it can corrupt the data.

teaboy5 · 28 Jun 2007 at 23:16

Energize said:
Can you get dual layer dvd-ram disks?

Dvd backup, flash memory or an external hdd is best for this.

HDD for backing up data within a business? Are you mad?

If i said that in work i would get laughed out of the building.

With tapes you have at least the last days backup, if you lose the days before you can easily go back 2 days if necessary; even a week if needs be.

If you backup everything to a drive, if it fails and you system fails at the same time where are you?

Up crap ally thats where

JayMax · 28 Jun 2007 at 23:46

Energize said:
Eh? Plug in front usb port, backup, then uplug. Doesn't get any easier than that.

What time of day are you thinking the backup will run? Working hours on live data? Good luck with your night shift, and your restoring

Energize · 28 Jun 2007 at 23:49

teaboy5 said:
HDD for backing up data within a business? Are you mad?

If i said that in work i would get laughed out of the building.

I'd get laughed at for spending £500+ on equipment to back up 12GB of data.

teaboy5 said:
If you backup everything to a drive, if it fails and you system fails at the same time where are you?

Same place as when a tape fails. For £500 you could have 10 hdds, one for monthly backups taken off site, another for weekly, and another daily. In the 21st century hard drives don't fail as often as tape retailers would have you believe.

JayMax said:
What time of day are you thinking the backup will run? Working hours on live data? Good luck with your night shift, and your restoring

Well it's automated so you don't need to be there for backing up.

HEADRAT said:
But there nothing to stop the RAID controller going POP! and corrupting the RAID or overwriting the data, or somebody accidentally delete online data.

I don't know of commerical servers that use 1 raid controller for the whole array.

Seriously, the whole raid array and all the backup hdds are not going to be completley destroyed at once, the chances of that happening are about as likely as the sun exploding or a nuclear bomb hitting the server.

There's a difference between caution and stupidity, £500 for 12GB of data is stupidity. I think the 6th post hit the nail on the head.