Backup strategy

We are currently in the process of evaluating an off-site disk-based backup solution. As I understand it, performing backups in this manner will alleviate many of the primary concerns with current Tape Backups. Disk backups are more reliable, and space is cheap. The only major downfall is the speed of the connections. If we could use gigabit ethernet I would, but I am looking to use fiber between two buildings, so this should be fast enough.

-J

I didn't look up the model of equipment that you are using but this should apply.

My last job had a tape library. We made backup tapes that were intended to remain in the library. Backup jobs ran at different times and there was idle time between backups. We were using Veritas Netbackup Datacenter software and the tape library had six tape drives, so it was pretty sweet. Anyway, I had a script that would run and when one batch of backups was finishing the script would instruct the Veritas software to make copies of the backup tapes. The way that Veritas works allowed me to put a certain number of tapes in a 'pool' that would be sent off site. That way all of the tapes in this pool would have backups made on the same date and all of the backups would expire at the same time making them available for Veritas to use again. Once the backups were copied to this second set of tapes designated for off site storage the Veritas software would eject the tapes. In the morning I would just pick up the stack of off site tapes from the tape library output box and put them into an Iron Mountain storage box with appropriate documentation. The Veritas software also created the documentation for each box. This was all done using the command line functions of Veritas in scripts. The main backup jobs were managed within the Veritas GUI job management interface. Overall it was great. That was the first time that I had used a tape library and I loved it. If a tape was bad the Veritas software would just eject it from the tape drive and replace it with another tape without any loss of backups. Using Veritas Netbackup Datacenter in this way with a tape library is the best way to approach mission critical backups. You have protection from bad tapes ruining your backups as mentioned above. You can make duplicate tapes of your backups to keep off site while keeping the principle backup tapes on site. I can't say enough good things about it. Mind you there were always little problems that came up with the Veritas software or the tape library hardware. I found the Veritas telephone support along with the Veritas user documentation to be excellent. If I couldn't fix some hiccup by looking up the error code in the documentation then the telephone support people usually did a good job helping me. I spent a lot of time initially writing these scripts to duplicate backup tapes because my scripts could do a better job of it than the Netbackup software, but once the scripts were written and working the whole thing was a blessing.

So, overall I believe very highly in using a tape library with intelligent backup software. My experience using Veritas is very good. I highly recommend the Veritas Netbackup product line. It has its quirks but you learn to work with it. For instance the first time that a backup failed because Netbackup said that there were no free tapes even though it looks to you like there are plenty of free tapes is a bitch. I learned to manually expire the backups on the oldest tapes every day.

If your backups are important to you, and if you want to make duplicates of your backups to store off site, then a robotic tape library and a good backup software solution are absolutely critical.