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Backup help for small LAN

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by m3ckon 1 view

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Can someone help (please?)

I have an 80 users LAN that I've just took over and the backup is abismal. They're using an offsite program for key files, but that's all they have.

I was going to implement an SDLT drive imediatley and then look at a full SAN solution.

I was just wanting some advice really as unfortunatley i dont have a massive budjet, but felt that an initial tape backup was a very good idea

Can anyone provide me with their thougths/comments please?

17 replies

by jdmercha

How much data do you need to backup? How many servers? Are you backing up the PC's as well? What type of network? MS? Novell? Linux? What type of LAN? 10MB? 100MB? 2GB?

by m3ckon

Thanks for getting back to me

It's on a 100mbs network and it's a microsoft windows network.

I've looked and at present there is 12 gig of files and 5 gig of databases. I was going to consider an sdlt drive.

I can probably justify anything under $6,000 but the less I spend the better. I just need what ever is backed up to be able to be moved off site.

Thanks M3ckon

by jdmercha

Of course saving money is always a good thing, and there are many good solution proposed here.

But if it were me, with a $6,000 budget I would seriouly consider a complete server solution. I took a quick look at Dell's website and it appears that for around $4,000 you can get a server with a built-in 36/73GB DAT. Including tapes and backup software.

by tomsal

JDmercha is right...we'd need more information. If you answer his/her questions, then we can collectively offer the best advice possible.

I would like to know even if just a ballpark figure...the kind of budget you'd have for a backup solution too.

by jdclyde

I took an IBM x205 server, got a promise IDE controller card and threw four 200 gig drives in it.

800 Gig total.

I then have a tape drive connected to that one server.

The individual servers and key PC's backup to this server automaticly, and then the tape is run.

Soon will be looking to add a DVD writer to the backup server. Anyone using a DVD as part of their backup solution now?

by stress junkie

I'm glad that you mention using DVD-RW media for backups. I think that it is a great idea. It has many advantages including economic. When I think of paying between $1,000 to $10,000 for an SDLT tape drive and up to $100 per tape, depending on density, the DVD-RW drives and media look like a good option. Sure they only handle a fraction of the capacity of SDLT but they cost much less so the cost evens out. The lower cost of the DVD-RW drive is pure cost savings.

Plus, in the U.S. the Sarbanes-Oxley Act requires that some backups be made on write once media. Magnetic tape only emulates this. DVD-R is actually true write once media.

You can further save costs by putting a couple of DVD-RW drives into an old pc and using Linux with Samba to backup Windows systems over the network via disk file shares on the clients. Admittedly, if you aren't familiar with Unix/Linux then the details of implementing this simple solution would still require a bit of effort learning Linux.

Nevertheless I'm a big believer in using DVD-R and DVD-RW instead of magnetic tapes. A word of caution though. I've heard that the cheap writeable CDs and DVDs will delaminate after a few years. The more expensive ones should last decades either in use or in archive storage.

Cheers.

by jdmercha

Is the failure rate on a DVD-R better than a CD-R?

I've seen a typical failure rate on CD-R's to be about 20%.

by jdclyde

That the server is a Linux server running Samba?

Works for me.

Will be checking the DVD soon. May have to start a thread when I do if someone doesn't have one going by then.

Thanks for the info!

by james schroer

Is there a standard for dvd-r or dvd-rw? With tape there is a rule and guarantee (if kept in the correct vault) that these tapes must follow, including that they are backward compatable with newer drives. DVDs are nice and cheap but easily messed up by a simple scratch on the top of the media or whose to say that the new dvd reader next year will read the dvds from 3 years ago? Also, how may DVDs will it tak to beable to hold 360gb of data while you can do this with one SDLT tape.

by jdclyde

Sounds like you need to do one or more of the following.

Buy name brand CD's.
Buy a better writter.
Write at a slower speed.
Run a CD Drive cleaner through your system.

If I scrap one in ten I am pissed off. How can you put up with one out of five?

by jdmercha

Yes 20% failures with name brands. 50% failures with off brands.

5 differnt writers, none over 4 years old.

Slower speeds seem to help somewhat.

Never cleand a CD drive with anything other than compressed air

by james schroer

Would it be better for you to Expence this instead of purchasing everything at once? If so you may want to look at an online backup sollution. One company that gets great reviews is EVault. There are more out there but I can't think of them. Basicly you will have no equipment to purchase and every time your data is backed up it's stored of site immediatly. Pluse you never have to upgrade your tape drive or buy new tapes. And you don't have to worry about security some of these places are complient with all the leagal issues concerning hospitals, banks, and finacial istitutions IE HIPPA. Just another thought you may want to look into.

by jdclyde

Waiting to see which of the MANY "standards" for DVD will rise to the top.

As for size, I only have about 10 gig that gets backed up in data, I just have directories setup for each day, and in each day I have a directory for each server.

Then I back up the directory of the day.

Currently this gets backed up to tape off this one server instead of having to have multiple tape drives to manage or pay for.

So the problem you are pointing out isn't a problem (yet).

by zczc23119

Please have a look at an Adaptec SNAP Server.
It is a hardware storage divice which will hold up to 230GIG, requires no operating system, plugs into you LAN, just like a PC, and recognises full directory services.

NO maintenance, no upgrades, no problems, no software. Just use your existing software to backup to this device as your LAN will see it just as a normal PC server with its own IP and it has a hunge amount of capacity

No Tape, little expense, no nothing

by dfacer

A decent streaming tape drive (of sufficient capacity) will cost a small fortune......not including the SCSI adapter you will need. Why not use a DVD burner instead? This will provide up to 8 Gb storage per disc should you use RW media, and it is far easier to retrieve data from - as well as quicker. Obviously, your final solution will depend on a number of factors, but a cheap interim solution could be DVD recording. I bet you probably already have one fitted to an administrative PC already.

by stress junkie

In the time since I posted my suggestion above I've discovered the dual layer DVD-RWs. As dfacer writes, these provide over 8 GB capacity. If you factor in compression you could expect to store 16 GB of data in an archive format on the DVD disk.

If you still need more capacity you can get more than one DVD-RW. External DVD-RW drives with USB interface cost about $200. You could connect several of these to the backup server and switch from one DVD-RW drive to the next as the backups run. This would be easy enough to do with GNU tar, which runs on Unix and also has a version for M$ platforms.

It is easy enough to imagine a backup server with three internal DVD-RW drives and six external drives. It would cost a lot less than a robotic DVD-RW library while giving you some of the advantages of a robotic library.

Lastly, don't buy the cheap stuff. The $200 per external drive is for Sony. There are less expensive drives but I have a couple of Sonys and they are great. Don't buy cheap DVDs either. The more expensive ones will probably have a longer useful life. This is important for long term archive.

Tapes are old fashioned, expensive, and easily erased by magnetic fields, and erase themselves when left on the shelf for long term archive storage. DVDs are faster, about the same cost for media, much less expensive for the drives, are not subject to magnetic field erasure, and have a longer useful life for long term storage.

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