Backups

TriedandTested · 13 Mar 2006 at 14:25

Here's m'plan.

I have two servers here that i would like to reliably and automatically backup. I was thinking of using Veritas to backup the two servers to a NAS device and, in turn, backing that up to some tapes. The NAS would initially have a storage of 500gb (i'll be using it for other things too). Now, i don't have much experience with tapes and would really appreciate some recommendations/advice.

Other than that, how does the backup 'plan' seem?

Thanks.

Skilldibop · 13 Mar 2006 at 15:12

I'd go straight to tape. If you fit each server with a tape drive then you can actually configure Symantec backup exec to back up to it's tape and backup other servers too.kinda like raid 5. backs itels up+ little bits from every other server. This might not be terribly useful if you only have 2 but 400Gig ultrim 2 will give you space to play with.

CoXeY · 13 Mar 2006 at 21:47

The plan sounds good. Like Skilldibop has said you're looking at LTO tape technology to store that volume of data. We currently use LTO2 tapes which are much faster and seem to be more robust that the DLT system we had in place previously.

Have you considered imaging software? I ask because about a fornight ago one of our production web servers failed and it quickly became apparent that despite having a full data and system state backup server recovery was not going to be very quick. I would be interested to see what others on here use to backup mission critical servers. I'm currently in the process of testing "image-based" backup suites as opposed to "data-based" products like Backup Exec and ArcServe, I must say I'm swaying towards what the imaging software has to offer. Having spoken with Acronis about their Enterprise Server for Windows they are boasting some pretty useful features that seem to blow the likes of ArcServe out the water!! Apparently in the next release (due in a month or so) Acronis can image one server and restore that image to another server of completly different architecture - I've not seen this in another product and it would overcome a lot of the problems faced with server recovery. Have I simply missed the bill with ArcServe or is imaging software really that much better?!

Sorry to hijack the thread but hopefully input on this topic will be usefull to both of us!

TriedandTested · 14 Mar 2006 at 09:24

Thanks for the info so far people.

Anyone considered the Iomega REV drives at all?

http://www.iomega-europe.com/eu/en/products/rev/rev_family_en.aspx