When Does Data Backup Become a Full Time Job?

nasteric asks: "Myself and 5 co-workers assume a number of responsibilities at my current job, including monitoring our tape backup jobs that run nightly. We do a good job of keeping non work related items (mp3's, wav files, etc.) off our servers, but our users keep eating up disk space very quickly. File storage, along with the fact that we have numerous projects 'going live' that each require one or more servers means more investment in our backup solutions. Fortunately, we have the capital to expand our backup solution (media, drives, autoloaders, software, etc.) but my boss cringes when I suggest hiring a full-time person to handle the backups. Ensuring the integrity of our nightly backups is critical, but my teammates are being spread thin due to the rapid expansion of our company. We really feel the best solution would be dedicated backup person. We currently backup approximately 3.5 terabytes of data and our enterprise expands to over 4 states. Does anybody have any suggestions as to when data backup becomes a full-time position? Are there any resources that specify when a full-time person dedicated to data backup should be hired? It would be nice to have some resources to refer to when proving my point to my boss."

Comments

automated solutions?

[Tumbleweed]

Have you looked into ways of only backing up data that really _needs_ to be backed up? Perhaps a backup solution that is configurable enough to block out mp3's and suchlike? Make the users do some of the work, or at least configure their machines so that the software they use saves files in places that get backed up automatically? (yet is still subject to the non-mp3,etc filters)

There's no way that this kind of thing *can't* be automated with enough work. The amount of billable time spent to get such a system going has to be much less than hiring a full-time backer-upper.

A place I used to work at had some shared drives on the servers - if you wanted your data backed up, you fricking saved it to those shared drives (dedicated folders for each employee & project), or else you didn't get your data backed up. And if something happened to your data that wasn't backed up, it's your problem (and thus, your ass).

Just a few thoughts.

Just a thought.

Re:automated solutions?

[Tim Macinta]

There's no way that this kind of thing *can't* be automated with enough work. The amount of billable time spent to get such a system going has to be much less than hiring a full-time backer-upper.

To add to this thought, here are some ways that you could set up such an automated system:

• As others have suggested, outsource it. There are plenty of storage service providers out there who specialize in this sort of thing and they will cost less than a full time employee.
• Keep all non-OS files on a network mounted drive and build the file server(s) using RAID arrays.
• Write a short shell script that tars up your files, scps them to another machine, and deletes any older backups from that other machine. Stick said script in your crontab. Now you don't have to mess with tapes (though you may want to copy the snapshots to tape every few weeks and take them offsite to guard against fire, theft, etc.).
• ...Or if you're in an environment that isn't easily scriptable (e.g., Windows), install a peer to peer backup solution to share backups within your office. HiveCache was mentioned here on Slashdot awhile back and it does this. I've also been working on such a solution myself which is currently in alpha testing and runs on Linux and Windows (although I think 3.5 terabytes is a bit more than it could handle at the moment). Even if these solutions don't perfectly match your needs, the cost of having them customized would most likely be less than hiring someone full time. A P2P solution would also address the original problem of growth a little better than the other solutions just because as more machines are added which require backup, those same machines add to a growing pool of storage for where backups are stored (so you don't have to worry about buying a bigger RAID array because you just surpassed X number of machines, for example).

Those are a few ideas on automating the daily plumbing of the backup process. There are also the issues of streamlining the set-up and recovery processes as well, which the original poster hinted at. Perhaps if his company is growing quickly enough, it is the actual introduction of new computers or projects into the backup process and their associated set-up which is dominating the time required for the backup process. It would stand to reason that this would be much harder to automate than the daily maintenance and perhaps this is what the poster wanted to hire somebody for, although if this is the case it would probably be best to just hire temporary help until the need subsides.

Create a part-time postition

[dt23507]

Just a thought: Would your boss would be more willing to hire someone *part-time* to handle the backups?

Price out automated backups and charge it back

[toybuilder]

Price out the cost of different automated backup systems, figure out the cost per MB, and then "sell" the different quality levels of storage the teams that are gobbling up disk space.