What backup - SME

gigeorge

gigeorge

gigeorge

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What are the best options for a small business server backup, tape – quite expensive, don’t want the hassle of carrying a drive around(single point of redundancy).. What are the options?


Backing up around 1 - 1.5 TB max.
 
Not really sold on the cloud storage - its in someone elses hands and if their stuff does get hit by some thing severe then theres no chance of getting it back... Luddite?
 
gigeorge said:
Still that element of non trust..

Ok so whos the best?
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Depends on your size of company / compliance / data change rate etc :)

Sunguard are one of the best, but not cheap :) Colt do a fairly robust service too as do most of the big system integrators / cloud providers.
 
gigeorge said:
tape – quite expensive, don’t want the hassle of carrying a drive around(single point of redundancy)
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I don't quite know why you think you'd be carrying a tape drive around?
I think tape is still the most convenient, reliable and tried-and-tested way of doing backups. Some people use portable HDD's rather than tape - It's not something I would advise, but it works.

Teledude said:
LTO5 now or LTO6 in a few months - a single drive LTO5 will do what you need :)
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HP are doing a promotion if you buy an LTO5 drive now, they'll swap it for an LTO6 on release.
Other manufacturers are probably following suit - but that's the one I've seen.
 
The budget is minimal really, lt drives seem around 1k, plus your tapes - another 600.. Its an office with 10 pcs i allowed 1.5 TB for growth over the next 5 years.. ITs an AC company that produces docs, invoices, a few autocad images etc..
 
dLockers said:
CrashPlan
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My company uses this. The CrashPlan Windows backup service is pretty frustrating to work with, as it often locks up files and processes when it scans, causing your computer to document / program to seemingly hang for a while.
 
Good to get views,

surely youd only have it active at night though when users werent accessing files using a incremental rather than full
 
gigeorge said:
Good to get views,

surely youd only have it active at night though when users werent accessing files using a incremental rather than full
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If you're referring to CrashPlan, no, it is set to run all the time, because a lot of the staff have laptops that we switch off at the end of the day (to put in locked cupboard / drawers or take home).
 
Backup to tape if you value your data.

Or as mentioned online backups, but might be out of your budget?

Otherwise something like Robocopy/Synctoys to an external media of your choice, for the cheap option.
 
How good is the disk setup in the server. Another thing to bear in mind is the backup window. As an example, one of my servers has an LTO4 backing up a RAID 10 array and does 600GB's in 5 and a 1/2 hrs.

Once you get to 1.5TB's, your going to need a quick source and destination unless your doing incrementals (I'd rather have a full backup myself each time)

IMHO though, tape will give you the least amount of problems.
 
Havent bought the server yet, am thinking of getting a HP server 8gb ram, basic xeon. I think the overhead is actually a little more like 750 gb but i allowed for growth in that figure
 
Whats the data retention?
You say you need to backup 1-1.5TB, some peoples data is redundant after a week, others need to keep it for 7 years.

If it's a couple of weeks you could back it up to another server across the network, if you need to keep years worth it will have to be tapes.
 
Disk to disk is by far the fastest and most reliable, and over the total life cycle often cheapest.
If you have long retentions then Disk to disk to tape is the best option. Because you have the online disk backups and the tape one is offline you don't have to worry about how long it takes and can use cheaper tape drives.

Everyone says budget is tight for backups, budget is irrelevant to a degree. If the solution costs less than the business losses in the event of losing that data then it's a viable investment.
All decent backup systems are expensive to implement, but it's only got to save your bacon once in it's entire lifecycle and it's paid for itself several times over.

A statistic I always quote to people who ask my advice on backups that illustrates this is more than 90% of business that lose data in an IT "disaster" cease trading within 2 years. Puts a bit of perspective on it.
 
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