Tape Drive/Backup Alternative

ProTech Support

ProTech Support

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As I mentioned in a previous thread, I am getting ready to leave my current corporate IT job for a new one. The original company has asked me to take them on as a client in the mean time. In the next 2 weeks I plan to finish up on some projects that I never finished as well as set the entire network up to run as smooth as possible without me being there all day.

Currently the company has a couple of servers. Currently my backup solution consists of using Windows Backup to a file server with a dedicated 1TB hard drive for backups. I also burn a couple of DVD's every Friday that are stored in an offsite location. Obviously with me working on a break/fix basis, this is no longer the right solution.

The first option I thought of was a tape drive, but with past experience I know they are slow and pricey. I decided to do a little searching around and ran into the "Imation RDX 26710 Removable Disk-Based Storage System" http://ow.ly/2ye9M

It is basically a "digital tape drive" that uses a special hard disk (tape replacement) to backup files. What I like is that you can treat it as a tape drive by easily swapping "tapes" to keep one off site. Does anyone have any experience with this beast, or have a solution you have used in the past? Any feedback is greatly appreciated as usual.
 
Is there a "cloud" solution that would work? Seems like a good way to go as you wouldn't necessarily ever have to physically be there like you would if you're managing a hardware based solution. You can manage it remotely and the data is automatically off-site as opposed to having to have someone take physical media somewhere.

Just wonderin'.
 
roughly how large are the backups?

Would a offsite backup solution help at all, ie do the backups online to a site similar to mozybackup?
 
Offsite backup would work for 3 of the servers, but one is a file server. The file server backups changed data every night, and does a full backup every Thursday night (then I burn to 4 DVD's Friday morning). It is usually around 25 gigs. Though the online backup sounds like a great solution, I don't know how feasible that would be with a 25 gig backup.
 
ProTech Support said:
Offsite backup would work for 3 of the servers, but one is a file server. The file server backups changed data every night, and does a full backup every Thursday night (then I burn to 4 DVD's Friday morning). It is usually around 25 gigs. Though the online backup sounds like a great solution, I don't know how feasible that would be with a 25 gig backup.
Click to expand...

Hmm.. leave it with me for a bit bud. I have a couple of contacts, who I can get in touch with, and see what they can come up with, if thats ok with you.
 
Only backing up to a hard drive can be risky (theft, fire, flood, hard drive failure, electrical short or surge). You need some type of off-site in place if its just taking tapes off-site daily or online backup. I have a client that is using an online data backup for 60 gigs of data and it works fine. The first initial backup takes a while but you can set bandwidth throttle. After the first backup, only the bits of changed data is backed up. Also make sure you have "versions" of backups. I always recommend having at least 5 days worth of backups you can go back to. If you don't go for online I still think tape is a good option, but it isn't cheap but I think a better option than backing up to just a single hard drive.

Hope that helps.
 
wimwauters said:
Can't one of the employees take a hard disk home each day? Accountant types are the most reliable & regular :cool:
Click to expand...
I took Accounting in Grade 11 and about the only thing I took out of that class was that good record keeping involves two copies. One on-site, one off-.

I've got a couple of (very) small business customers that I've set up to do their daily backups during lunch time. At the end of the day, they swap out the USB drive and take it home, alternating each day. Then, as an added precaution their main computer backs up docs/etc to the other after hours.

Edit: I've got a couple of extremely small businesses that I've set up to use Dropbox. They just need to back up their Quickbooks and a few docs so it's a great solution for them.
 
I don't think tape drives are slow. I backup around 100GB in 1 1/2 hours on our file server with LTO3. You wouldn't need something that big though. They are costly though. Tape is the best I think though. Only problem with cloud is when a disaster does happen, how long will it take you to download all the data?
 
Does the server have USB 3.0? If so, get a couple western digital portable USB 3.0 drives and swap them. Cheap, easy and reliable.
 
I did this.

{ring, ring, ....}

Anne: "Hello, This is Anne can I help you?"
Me: " Hi Anne. Just calling to touch bases with you on how the backups are going?".
Anne: "Good when we remember to swap them. Do we take them home with us?".

Me: {face-palm}...............
 
Had to drive out to a customer to restore from tape today because they have no idea what tape to load.



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