Back-Up Advice Needed Please
Posted by: Sloop John B on 13 June 2006
I work in a pharmacy and got a new server with a mirrored raid array (I think that's the terminology - basically everything is written to 2 disks so if one dies the other kicks in).
We are using an iomega rev drive for backup of data to be brought off site and this is causing an horrendous amount of hassle. We've already gone through 6 rev drives and 2 external rev drives. They just seem to die and my support company has found iomega as helpful and knowledgeable as a slightly stale rich tea biscuit.
Can anyone suggest other options for offsite data backup. The backup file is big at about 14GB so DVDs are out. Backups are brought offsite daily.
Any ideas about alternatives?
Thanks
SJB
Posted on: 13 June 2006 by Jono 13
Posted on: 13 June 2006 by Steve G
DLT or DDS4 tape drives would be fine for your purposes and not too expensive.
Posted on: 13 June 2006 by Paul Hutchings
I would suggest tape is the way to go if you want to do full GFS backup rotations.
At work we've standardized on the Ultrium (LTO) format.
Pay as much attention to the software that you choose as you do to the tape format that you choose - most are proprietary and you don't want to find in five years that you have the tape and a compatible tape drive but the software vendor has gone bust etc.
Also try and choose something that makes it very quick and easy to see if a job worked or not, and if not why not etc.
cheers,
Paul
Posted on: 13 June 2006 by Keith Tish
We just went through this as we put a new system in our doctors offices. We ought a DAT tape based system. 72 or 36GB per tape. Programmed to back up daily overnight and you simply buy 7 tapes (if open 7 days) and take them home the next day. DAT is the most robust and has the size capability you need.
A mirrored RAID is fine for built in redundancy and will allow you to keep on working if one HD goes belly up during working hours but is useless if your server is stolen or damaged by fire/vandalism etc. With off site tapes you can buy a computer off the shelf and have your business back running that day with only a single days lost data.
Make sure you occasionally back up the system software as well as just your data.
We bought a Hewlett Packard Storage Works DAT72 USB INTERNAL drive and 5 DAT tapes. Our practice manager (who does all the work) is very happy.
Keith
Posted on: 14 June 2006 by Sloop John B
quote:
Originally posted by Keith Tish:
We just went through this as we put a new system in our doctors offices. We ought a DAT tape based system. 72 or 36GB per tape. Programmed to back up daily overnight and you simply buy 7 tapes (if open 7 days) and take them home the next day. DAT is the most robust and has the size capability you need.
A mirrored RAID is fine for built in redundancy and will allow you to keep on working if one HD goes belly up during working hours but is useless if your server is stolen or damaged by fire/vandalism etc. With off site tapes you can buy a computer off the shelf and have your business back running that day with only a single days lost data.
Make sure you occasionally back up the system software as well as just your data.
We bought a Hewlett Packard Storage Works DAT72 USB INTERNAL drive and 5 DAT tapes. Our practice manager (who does all the work) is very happy.
Keith
Thanks Keith, this seems to be more or less exactly what I need. I'll have a word with my support company.
Thankfully we will only need 6 tapes
SJBPosted on: 15 June 2006 by Keith Tish
quote:
Thankfully we will only need 6 tapes
Only open 6 days a week. Call yourself a caring professional. Humbug!!
(God I'm sounding like Mick Parry)
Keith
Posted on: 15 June 2006 by Derek Wright
"Thankfully we will only need 6 tapes"
per two years - tapes do degrade and also cause wear and tear on the tape heads.
It might also be worth considering having one of the 6 tapes on a 4 week cycle so you can look back a bit further than the last 7 days. or even a monthly cycle of tapes (and then you will think of having at least one of days tapes on a 12 monthly cycle)
Once you have some historical data (if only for back up ) you start to say what if? and did what happen? etc
Posted on: 15 June 2006 by Paul Hutchings
Given the low cost of tapes I'd consider keeping a GFS rotation (weekly gets kept for a month, monthly for a year, yearly indefinitely).
Most of my restore requests are against "dumb" file servers, but I've found people tend to look for something and then realise it's not there and that they've deleted it some time back which is when they call IT, it's almost never "I've just this second deleted".
If you get the server with Windows Server 2003, if it's up to the task also consider switching on the Volume Shadow Copy Service, it's an excellent feature IMHO and has stopped me having to hit the tapes many times.
Paul
Posted on: 17 June 2006 by Martin Payne
Presumably, that's 14GB after compression?
If not, with 2:1 compression it might just fit onto a dual-layer DVD (8.5GB).
Still, that would be too close to the disc's capacity to rely on long term.
Also, make sure that the software performs a verify of the backup. Presumably, the s/w would leave the "verified successfully" message on screen for the next morning.
It is also worthwhile to prove that you can actually restore from a backup, but often that's not convenient 'cos you certainly don't want to do by overwriting the data on your live server.
cheers, Martin
Posted on: 17 June 2006 by Guido Fawkes
I'm not up on Windoze servers and am assuming that's what you've got, but I think the same principles should apply as they do for Unix servers.
Do you need to do a full backup each time or could you do an incremental or differential backup - i.e just back up the changes since the last backup or just backup the changes since your last full backup? This would reduce the amount of data you needed to store and make DVD-R a possible option.
I always use DVD-R for backup, which I do with a DVD-R auto-changer, but DLT should be OK if you prefer tapes.
Posted on: 18 June 2006 by Martin Payne
ROTF,
do you just use write-once discs (more reliable than DVD-RW, I believe)?
I've read that DVD-RAM discs are the most reliable of the DVD formats, as they were disigned from the start to hold data instead of movies.
I have no idea how true this is.
Combined DVD R, RW & RAM drives are now ridiculously cheap.
It appears RAM discs are limited to 4.7GB per side, though.
cheers, Martin
Posted on: 18 June 2006 by Guido Fawkes
Martin
We use write once discs - our backups are archives too. It is not so much for restoring the system in case of failure but to restore data should it be needed for an investigation. We keep them because we have to - I'm not aware of anybody asking for a restore. We do rehearse restores though just in case.
We use a DVD-R with an autochanger (juke box) from
Plasmon and it works really well. You do get about 4.75GB per disc. The system looks at the file system and when it sees that there are 4GB of changed data to write it does so. There is also a timer so if it hasn't written anything for an agreed period then it does so anyway for satefy. We encrypt data on DVD if the customer asks us to - though I have reservations about this because if the key were compromised then I don't know what that does for the historic collection. Some customers insist on collecting their DVD every day so they can keep it safe.
I'm not sure if the EU will introduce a HIPAA style of regulation, but it may do. In which case you could use the backup as admissable evidence to help show that the prescribed drug was dispensed correctly. You'd need a good set of process to support the use of the DVD-Rs, of course.
At home on my Apple PowerMac and PowerBook, I use DVD-Rs in the SuperDrive for backup. I also have a LaCie hard disk drive (FireWire) that I keep system images on - using Carbon Copy Clone - which lets me recover the system should I need to.
Rotf
