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Advice on Remote Backup Services?

Posted by Cliff on from the when-data-storage-outstrips-local-backup-capacity dept.

a-freeman asks: "Faced with the prospect of doing automated weekly backups for several servers with some 200 GB of files each, I have been looking for a remote backup solution. A couple of recent articles consider backup to hard drives, although I feel this still fails the 'separate snapshot in time' aspect of good backup policy, since with many of the solutions that I have seen, you will likely lose all your backups if your array gets corrupted. However, CD-Rs and DVDs are just too damn small. Can anyone recommend a remote backup service or interesting combination of hosting service + FTP/RSync/etc., or am I stuck buying a tape drive?"

2 of 30 comments (clear)

  1. Why wouldn't you want a tape drive? by SpaFF · · Score: 4, Informative

    "...or am I stuck buying a tape drive?"

    Whats wrong with a tape drive? It is a medium that was designed for backups. If you are going to be backing up large amounts of data you need a tape-library and remote backup software. If you want the convienence of harddrives then attach the tape-library to a machine with a whole lot of disk. You can backup to the disks first and then archive whats on the backup-server to tape. Most backup software programs allow you to do this.

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  2. Tape drives. by Zapman · · Score: 4, Informative

    "It's hard to beat the bandwidth of a stationwagon filled with DAT tapes"

    If you're talking: 1) several servers and 2) 200ish gigs per, welcome to needing a real backup solution.

    One thing to keep in mind is the three 'kinds' of backups. You will need to cover (or choose not to) all three.

    1) DR. Disaster recovery. A full image of ALL data, usually duplicated so you have a in house copy and a remote copy. Full system images, and a software package that can blast a full system image to a box, or full data and config backups that require an OS install before your restore. Usually this is somewhat light on tapes, since you'll only keep 2-3 weeks of them.

    2) File Recovery. Someone deleted something that they shouldn't have and need it restored. Or the Database equivelent: "We dropped this table 5 weeks ago, and discovered just now this random important process that hits it every 2 months. Can we restore the DBF file so we can get that table, data and schema back?" Sometimes DR feeds into File Recovery. You just keep the tapes longer. More expensive in tapes though, and you have data you'll not use (like OS images) wasting tape space. It's easier though.

    3) Archival. EG: The IRS mandates that we keep this data for N years (where N is usually greater than 7). Thankfully, this is a thin ammount of data, but it's important none the less. CD/DVD rock for this, but tapes are good too (so long as you're under 10 years. Media and reader issues will kill you after that).

    Good luck. Backups are a huge pain. Be sure to test the DR portion of it at least once a year. You'll be thankful you do.

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    Zapman