Choosing hardware/media for backup?
 

Hello,

I'm beginning to plan a backup strategy for my servers - something more than my current "pop in a CD and find some important stuff to put on it."

I'd like to either use a Amanda-type scheme, or do a nightly backup of important files (call it ~500-1000 Mb) and a full weekly backup (~20-80Gb).

What are my choices in terms of hardware? I'm on a TIGHT budget.

My main requirement is that it HAS to have the capability of doing unattended backups.

Should I look into buying a (used) tape or CD/DVD autoloader/jukebox, or (considering budget restrictions) should I just look into a NAS server with a big array of drives, and finding some way of unmounting and write-protecting them when they're not being used (like mounting/unmounting via a script as a root cron job)?

Thanks,
Jason

You might look at a kurobox nas. It is available with GigE and you install the size of hard drive you require. It runs about $150 without drive. Looks like an external usb drive. Runs linux.


http://kurobox.com/

Good Luck

Lazlow

My only concern with something where the media is network-connected (i.e. not a autoloader/jukebox where the physical tape/CD/DVD is out of the drive) is the possibility of a malicious user who has gained access being able to erase the backups. Not to mention the possibility of physical faliure (like an AC voltage injection over the ethernet cable). I understand that the second fault would be hard to prevent, but what about the possibility of backups being accidentially - or intentionally - erased?

And is something that's still network-attached considered as fault-tolerant as a tape library?

Get a good UPS for whatever backup system(computer or otherwise) you have. Good ones have a ethernet pass through to prevent spikes coming across ethernet.

Any machine on the network will be subject to hacking. You pretty much have to be on your network to back your network up.

Tapes drives are secure because you are supposed to move the tapes off site. If you move the drives from the nas off site you would have the same condition.

Lazlow

Backup to a disk array on your network, that keeps your backup and restore windows small since you can write to disk much faster than tape. Then backup the "backup array" to tape for offsite storage.

Best of both worlds. Instant gratification for restores from the drive array, and in case of disaster (or malicious intent) you have an offsite tape archive you can retrieve and restore locally if needed.

I use a commercial product to do this, it automatically runs differential backups every night archives monthly for a year, Weekly for a month, and Daily for a week. then I can archive the backups to tape as well. The system only backs up delta changes (think rsync) so the backup set is small for all these restore points. a Full year of backups for our company for 12 servers eats up about 900GB

This was what I was looking at... any recommendations for inexpensive autoloaders, or at least an inexpensive but reliable tape format? I'm not really up on the choices.

I was looking at some on ebay, and found a review of an older (model unknown) autoloader with firmware that could be set to only allow one tape change per 24 hours, thereby dealing with the malicious deletion problem.

Inexpensive autoloader..

I think those two terms are diametrically opposed, I have yet to find a Cheap Autoloader..

I've been looking at the LTO 3 Libraries. I have a LOT of data to back up and Media cost needs to be figured in as well as the cost of the Autoloader..Offsite transport and Storage of the tapes, etc.. LTO3 holds 400 GB natively without compression so I can store more data on less tapes. that's a plus in my book.. Media will add up quickly when you start computing how many tapes you nee for your complete rotation. Also LTO has maintained backward compatability for Read and Write with LTO 1 and LTO 2.. May not seem important to you now, but down the road when your drive dies and you upgrade to the new standard then all of a sudden you need to pull an old LTO3 tape.. will it still work in the new drive ? With DLT and AIT good luck..

I finally got the budget approval to get what I need for my system I had TWO RAID arrays go critical and fail within a week of each other. One was the Array on the Disk to Disk backup system that held all the backups, the second was the SQL Database server. It went critical and failed right after All the backups were lost.. Manangement FINALLY got the clue, when we were down for 3 days while I rebuilt everything by hand.. and realised the requests I have been making for the last two years weren't just for new toys to play with.

I don't know about you but I have never seen 3 drives fail in two seperate RAID 5 ARRAYS in that short a time span.. totally unreal... Hardware RAID 5 with Hotspares and POOF... there goes your data.. I had a really bad month.

I just finished today replacing the Second array with new Hardware and transferring all the backups to the new array.. I'll be sleeping well tonight, not worrying if yet another RED light will be on the array in the morning..
Tommorow I'll be speaking wth my Rep about Tape or Offsite Electronic vaulting for DR purposes..

Offsite stprage isn't an issue.

This is for a mostly personal system driving my site (and MANY other services). Anything that is revenue-generating already has plans in place (most of my code, which I backup to DVD after major revisions).

I just picked up a Quantum TH6BE (DLT IV) for $5 from a University surplus store. I'm going to see how that goes with daily backups to a staging disk and weekly backups from there.

I'm usually only home on weekends, so I wanted an autoloader to havle dailys - the total volume of data will fit well onto a 35/70 Gb tape. I had planned on using a 8-10 tape rotation, using 7 tapes for the weekly and then pulling one of them at the end of the week to keep out of the machine as a weekly.

Cost of the media is very important, as I had not planned on spending over $200-300 for the drive.