Server Backup Options
osaddict
London, UK
We are currently using a Dat72 tape drive to back up our SBS2003 server, however, the tape drive seems like it might be on its last legs - repeated problems, cleaning required way more frequently and requiring 6-7 cleans from a NEW cleaning tape before its 'clean' etc...
All this makes me think perhaps the tape route should be sacked off in favour of something else...
What backup methods do you guys use for your servers?
We backup around 60-70gb per night, mon - fri and have 10 tapes so a two week cycle.
All this makes me think perhaps the tape route should be sacked off in favour of something else...
What backup methods do you guys use for your servers?
We backup around 60-70gb per night, mon - fri and have 10 tapes so a two week cycle.
0
Comments
Tape
Harddrive
Remote
Figure out how important your data is, should you lose it. Set your budget and spend it.
We currently backup every server to 1 server then backup that server to tape. We have a grandfather>father>son backup system. We then have a second tape device that I use to make sure I can recover the tapes.
The reason for one simple reason. Tape drives can go out of alignment so that you can have a tape that can be written to and read from, but only on that particular machine. If you lose that machine then your tape backups are useless.
The only recoveries we have had to do have been successful, and often just for excel files etc.
For a tape drive which backs up around 60gb a night monday - friday what would you expect its life span to be? - I think we have had the drive around 2 years, not that long I thought.
It's always been a bit patchy on the cleaning front - and required something like 4-5 runs with a tape before it cleans properly, however, recently I've tried silly amounts, like 15 - 20 times and it still fails - even with new cleaning tapes and brand new media
The problems you mention with tape drives and alignment (not to mention the cleaning aspect) are the sort of things which make me want to steer away from this kind of technology, and steer towards portable hdd's - with prices dropping you can get an 80gb portable hdd (seagate or decent brand) for around 35 quid, when tapes cost around 10 and a decent external tape drive costs £400 plus it makes HDD's look attractive imo.
The only issue comes when you want to keep a monthly backup as an 'archive' the closest I could think of here was to take one of the backup files and split it win winrar and then burn it to dual layer dvds
Perhaps I am looking at tapes from the wrong perspective, but I just see lots of problems with them
To be honest, the most used feature of the backup is users deleting files or saving over them by accident so far.
But the main aim is that if a server was rebuilt that we could basically get all our documents back on it, sure the tape backs up system state, but I've heard that trying to rebuild a server and including that can be a bit of a nightmare.
That way we can have 10 backups on the NAS from the nightly backups, and the tape can be the off site storage, and we can use the tape to archive off monthly.
I don't really like tape drives, but they do seem to be the standard.
/osaddict gets on google for Dat72 tape drives prices and reviews
(Subtle hint above, if anyone can recommend good DAT72 drives, and perhaps more importantly ones to AVOID due to them being sh1t that would be great, oh yeah, external too, not internal
For makes we've got IBM (internal) and Quantum externals and they've all worked well.
If you're running Windows 2003 Server, look into Shadow Copy. It has saved me countless hours in restoring files.
I was just going to say that. So much easier than having to mess with tapes. Right click, properties, then hit the tab for previous versions.
http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/uk/en/sm/WF06b/25279-25367-12215126-12215126-12215152-12242458-58193399.html
http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/uk/en/sm/WF06b/25279-25367-12215126-12215126-12215152-12242458-65734853.html?jumpid=oc_R1002_UKENC-001_HP%20DAT%2072e%20TV%20USB%20External%20Promo%20Tape%20Drive&lang=en&cc=uk
Except the product number I can't actually see any difference lol.
We have SBS2003, so yeah I guess I could use the volume shadow copy, not sure exactly how that would work - the network drives which users use are just mappings to folders on the non OS HDD on the server, thats it - they don't authenticate on a domain or anything like that - would I still be able to use shadow copy? - I'm sure I looked in to it a couple of years ago and there was some problem with our set up and how it functioned, perhaps I need to revisit it...
Enable VSS for the drive and any network shares you create on that drive will have snapshots made at the times you designate. The snapshots have to have a storage location, so you'll need another drive, but the cost of an inexpensive hard drive is well worth the saved time.
Our VSS backups go for about a month, and it's been a godsend.
Currently 'client' machines have a mapping to the drives:
\\ServerName\FolderName -- Becomes X drive etc
That is it - no domain infrastructure, heck half the PCs are on XP home.
I've read a white paper from MS about shadow copy, I see it requires vista or xp pro - just over (1 machine tips it!) half of the machines in here fit that criteria, and for those that don't they sit close enough to someone who does for it not to be a major issue.
So, I'm thinking, get a decent brand 500gb external hdd, plug it in to the server, use that as the storage for shadow copies, tell it to have no limit.
Basically I'd then need to tell it how frequently to create a copy, and that would basically be it?
Is it that simple or have I overlooked anything - as I say, the environment here is not domain based, virtually everything you read from a server perspective assumes a domain, but looking at this I don't think that's necessary.
But as you say, even if not I can do it and it will still be quicker than tapes