Backup Solution for a small business?

Energize said:
I'd get laughed at for spending £500+ on equipment to back up 12GB of data.
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The size of the data is not important. Whatever business you are supporting could and probably will go bust without being able to restore with 2-3 days loss, arguably a week at most. What price do you put on a business concern?

Energize said:
Eh? Plug in front usb port, backup, then uplug. Doesn't get any easier than that.
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Two external drives in rotation? (I'll assume you meant that). I'll bet you that unless the op is doing this task himself, whatever user is meant to do it will screw up, forget, get bored or get confused within 14 days and it will be a mess. It's hard enough getting clients to swap tapes never mind doing that with external hard drives.

Energize said:
the chances of that happening are about as likely as the sun exploding or a nuclear bomb hitting the server
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Again, I reiterate that it is not the size of the data, but the importance. Sure, we don't know what the op's requirements are for it being business critical. I just think it's a very cavalier attitude, imo £500 is very well spent on a solid backup strategy.
 
Energize said:
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.
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RAID 5/10 has performance advantages as well as disc failure characteristics, I still wouldn't use it to store backup data, what if there's a fire and the server is toast.

Energize said:
I'd get laughed at for spending £500+ on equipment to back up 12GB of data.
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Then the data either has no value to the business or the people laughing are fools, maybe they wouldn't laugh so loud if the data was actually gone!

Most business fail after a fire, distaster etc. because of the loss of data not the loss of premises etc.

HEADRAT
 
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Energize said:
I'd get laughed at for spending £500+ on equipment to back up 12GB of data.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.
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I'm with Jaymax on this, it all comes down to how much the data is worth. However you look at this, tape will be a better solution, but it could be hard to justify the price is the data beign backed up isn't of critical importance.

Just ask yourself this: how much would it cost to recreate all the data if it was lost?

Burnsy
 
One thing I've heard is that in the next version of SBS - version 2008 codenamed Cougar - the integrated backup program to replace the venerable NTBACKUP will not support backup to tape, which is an interesting decision to say the least.

As burnsy2023 says at the end of the day it is all about how valuable your data is to you & your company. I work for a IT reseller/solutions provider & you'd be surprised some of the comments we get from potential clients (usually from thos holding the purse strings) about their business crittical data - ultimately their Intellectual Property (IP) and the bread & butter of their company.

Backup is just a numbers game really - RAID cards fail, RAID stripes get broken, hard disks fail, tape drives aren't infallible either. As a low cost solution why not get around 8 external hard disks and rotate them? You could do Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday & Thursday disks and then Friday 1, 2, 3 and 4 disks. That way you're lowering the odds significantly of losing more than a day or two's work via disk failure - especially if you treat the backup disks with kid gloves as they are still hard disks...
 
JonnyT said:
especially if you treat the backup disks with kid gloves as they are still hard disks...
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That would scare the jeebus out of me, drop a tape nothing really happens, drop a disc :eek:
 
That would make me feel a little less :eek:

BUT

if you're going to buy 8 of these that will be £640 so I'm not really sure that's a cheap solution, you could buy a DAT drive for half that price.

If you're willing to buy something on a well known auction site you can get some pretty tasty kit for next to nothing.

HEADRAT
 
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As said previously - I would feel very vulnerable using HD's rather than tapes.

Tapes you can have a library off - you can (if you rotate correctly) restore from any moment in time since you implemented the solution. You could have either a week, two-weeks, month or more in there with no problems.

With HD's it would be a nightmare even if you had two HD's theres still a high risk of them both going missing or both being damaged - with tapes it simply isn't the case. The operator on the hard-drive would also have to be very competent to check the data and make sure data isn't over written as you could have an entire weeks backup on there.



M.
 
m4cc45 said:
As said previously - I would feel very vulnerable using HD's rather than tapes.

Tapes you can have a library off - you can (if you rotate correctly) restore from any moment in time since you implemented the solution. You could have either a week, two-weeks, month or more in there with no problems.

With HD's it would be a nightmare even if you had two HD's theres still a high risk of them both going missing or both being damaged - with tapes it simply isn't the case. The operator on the hard-drive would also have to be very competent to check the data and make sure data isn't over written as you could have an entire weeks backup on there.



M.
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Wholeheartedly agree here, if the server is running mirrored arrays then thats plenty of hard drives in the equation. tapes/carts are the better bet. Bear in mind the costs of backup solutions though.
Symantec buexec 11.d corca 250-270 quid
ait1 or dat 72i drive or similar will run 230+ quid
tapes around £10 each x around 10-12 needed. all in all you are looking at around £600 ish with plenty of scope for capacity without having to change kit. Too many people tailor their backups for their immediate needs then find they need to chuck their kit 6 months-1 year down the line.
 
HEADRAT said:
That would scare the jeebus out of me, drop a tape nothing really happens, drop a disc :eek:
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The read/write heads are parked and hdds withstand many times the force of mavity so nothing would happen. More likely for a tape to break than a hdd if dropped.

m4cc45 said:
With HD's it would be a nightmare even if you had two HD's theres still a high risk of them both going missing or both being damaged
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No there isn't.

The operator on the hard-drive would also have to be very competent to check the data and make sure data isn't over written as you could have an entire weeks backup on there.
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The backup program will stop data being overidden. You have the same risk with tapes. Lets be honest if your operating 2 servers you are going to be able to backup some data. ;)
 
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Energize said:
The read/write heads are parked and hdds withstand many times the force of mavity so nothing would happen. More likely for a tape to break than a hdd if dropped.
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The heads aren't parked if it's doing something at the time and I would definetly say that tapes are more robust.

Burnsy
 
We went with 2 320 USB hard drives, and will burn a dual layer DVD of the data every 2 weeks. Should be enough, the chance of it being stolen are pretty low as there are security cameras and security doors, and so just taking the back ups of a DVD or 2 every few weeks in conjunction with the hard drive should be safe enough for the business. :)

Thanks for the replies though all.
 
Energize said:
The read/write heads are parked and hdds withstand many times the force of mavity so nothing would happen. More likely for a tape to break than a hdd if dropped.
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I guarantee you now - heads parked or not - that a drop on the floor from a reasonable height will damage it. Maybe not noticable the first time you do it but you keep using it and it will be damaged.

The only way tapes will get damaged is with severe impact. We're talking chucking the thing at the floor.

In the worlds of media - the tape is more robust.



M.
 
Tape. Hard disks are not a valid solution unless we're talking replaceable data.

DAT drives can be bought on eBay for pennies and a simple DAT24 will do the necessary. You can even buy USB DAT drives now.
 
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