Hello all,
I am with the IT Manager from Veterinary Supply Company. I am in the process of evaluating our Backup System.
I would like to know what kind of Hardware/Software setup others are using. What success with restore (if you have had the need). And a basic description of your organization (business type). Like I will do as follows.
Stearns Vet Outlet Backup. We are backing up mainly document and accounting data. Nightly, one machine gathers all information from the various servers to a central Hard Disk (Backup Stage 1). From this hard disk the data is further backed up to one two external hard drives. Each external hard drive is swapped out daily and removed from site. Each drive holds 7 backups, for a total of 14 days. Weekly (Mondays) a third external drive is connected and the central Hard Drive(Backup Stage 1) we copy a weekly backup keeping 4 separate backups on this drive (last 4 weeks). On the first of the Month we bring in yet another external Hard drive and back up the central hard drive (Backup stage 1) Thus taking monthly snapshots for the last 12 months. This drive is stored in our safe deposit box.
So our backup consists of the following
1) Nightly backup to Central Hard Disk
2) Nightly backup to External Hard Disk, swapped daily with each drive holding 7 days (14 days total)
3) Weekly snapshot of data up to Sunday Night (4 weeks stored)
4) Montly snapshot of data up to last day of the month (12 months stored)
The External Hard drives are USB 2.0 of 500GB and 1 TB sizes (much larger than we need at this time) and compressed.
The software used to sync and replicate all of this is Syncback. All files are stored in their original format (not packed into a single backup file), facilitating quick and simple file restore. The software also has a restore feature.
Now…. I am fairly confident that this is a good backup system. However, is it what everyone else is doing? Are there better ways? I am not looking for advice so to speak, but for information on what you all are doing in the real world, so I can take a look at what others are doing and evaluate what I am doing based on that.
Thanks,
Lonny