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Best Backup Server Option For University TV Station?
idk07002 writes 'I have been tasked with building an offsite backup server for my university's television station to back up our Final Cut Pro Server and our in-office file server (a Drobo), in case the studio spontaneously combusts. Total capacity between these two systems is ~12TB. Not at all full yet, but we would like the system to have the same capacity so that we can get maximum life out of it. It looks like it would be possible to get rack space somewhere on campus with Gigabit Ethernet and possibly fiber coming into our office. Would a Linux box with rsync work? What is the sweet spot between value and longevity? What solution would you use?'
Try one of these babies on for size. 67TB for about $8,000.
There's a full parts list and a Solidworks model so you can get your local sheet metal shop to build cases for you.
Talk to a mechanical engineering student on campus, they can probably help with that.
You may want to check out rdiff-backup also. It produces a mirror like rsync, and uses a similar algorithm, but keeps reverse binary diffs in a separate directory so you can restore to previous states. However, because it keeps these diffs in addition to the mirror, it's better if you have more space on the backup side.
There are a few different frontends/guis to it but I don't have experience with them.
Backups for UNIX, backups for Windows, and backups all across the board almost require different solutions.
For an enterprise "catch all" solution, I'd go with TSM, Backup Exec, or Networker. These programs can pretty much back up anything that has a CPU, although you will be paying for that privilege.
If I were in an AIX environment, I'd use sysback for local machine backups and backups to a remote server.
If I were in a general UNIX environment, I'd use bru (it used to be licensed with IRIX, and has been around so long, it works without issue with any UNIX variant.) Of course, there are other solutions that work just as well, both freeware, and commercial.
If I were in a solidly Windows environment, I'd use Retrospect, or Backup Exec. Both are good utilities and support synthetic full backups so you don't need to worry about a full/differential/incremental schedule.
If I were in a completely mixed environment, I'd consider Retrospect (it can back up a few UNIX variants as well as Macs), Backup Exec, or an enterprise level utility that can back up virtually anything.
Please note, these are all commercial solutions. Bacula, Amanda, tar over ssh, rsync, and many others can work just as well, and likely will be a lot lighter on the pocketbook. However, for a business, some enterprise features like copying media sets, or backing up a database while it is online to tape or other media for offsite storage may be something to consider for maximum protection.
The key is figuring out what you need for restores. A backup system that is ideal for a bare metal restore may be a bit clunky if you have a machine with a stock Ubuntu config and just a few documents in your home directory. However, having 12 terabytes on Mozy, and needing to reinstall box from scratch that has custom apps with funky license keys would be a hair puller. Best thing is to use some method of backups for "oh crap" bare metal stuff, then an offsite service just in case you lose your backups at that location.
Figure out your scenario too. Are multiple Drobos good enough, or do you need offsite storage in case the facility is flooded? Is tape an option? Tape is notoriously expensive per drive, but is very economical once you start using multiple cartridges. Can you get away with plugging in external USB/SATA/IEEE 1394 hard disks, backing to them, then plopping them in the Iron Mountain tub?
The hard drives are desktop class, not designed for 24x7 operation. Not designed for massive write traffic that server backups generates.
Latent defects on disks are a real concern.
You write your data to a disk, but there's a bad sector, or miswrite, and when you go back later (perhaps when you need the backup), there are errors on the data you are reading from the disk.
Moreover, you have no way of detecting it, or deciding which array has recorded the "right value" for that bit...
That is, unless every bit has been copied to 3 arrays.
And every time you read data, you compare all 3. (Or that you have two copies and a checksum)
Well, the complexity of this redundancy reduces the reliability overall, and it has a cost.