Re: Offsite backup options
- From: "mswlogo" <geomills@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: 2 Jun 2006 13:02:34 -0700
Dave Nickason [SBS MVP] wrote:
1. I really dislike the idea of DVD - too slow and resource intensive,
you'd want to run it on a workstation so you don't hang the server, just not
an idea that seems appealing for business critical data.
2. There must be good companies that offer this, but I don't seem to hear
about any satisfied customers. Once in a while someone will post in saying
their online backup didn't work when they needed to restore.
3. I like (and use) Exabyte VXA Drives for this. You can get tapes that
are sized and priced for what you need, and if you outgrow the tapes you can
upgrade them without having to replace the drive. The small tapes are
priced comparably to DDS4, and the drives aren't much more expensive if you
shop them around. You can get a SCSI card for your server for not a lot of
money. http://www.exabyte.com/
I ended up buying a Exabyte VXA-172 Autoloader. And I'm kinda sorry I
did.
Until our backups start to exceed a single tape I just wanted to use
the Built-In SBS Backup which works pretty good for our current needs.
I've been using it to a network drive and it's been flawless.
They basically do not support NT Native backup (even though they have
drivers for it).
They were clueless in helping me find the drivers because they didn't
list any driver for the VXA-172. Turns out the driver (set) is the same
for VAX-320 and VXA-2.
It's kind of a hack to get it to work, you use the Diagnostic tool to
return a drive type string and then choose the VXA-2 SCSI driver from
the download of the VXA-320 to be used VXA-172 drive (simple eh?). But
I just can't seem to get it to work. You can hear the tape spinning but
NT just keeps saying "Mounting".
Their diagnostic runs fine (which bypasses the driver).
They were very rude and clueless in helping.
They also claim they don't support any particular software, they just
supply the hardware.
The user interface on the front of the autoloader is also very
annoying. And it seems to get very confused. I load a tape in
autoloader then tell it to load the tape in the drive and it says the
autoloader is empty. Then it says it's busy, then empty, then it
suddenly works.
I know I will eventually need 3rd party backup, but I just wanted to
try the thing out before buying more software that might not be
compatible with the final system I end up with.
Very tempted to send it back.
4. People do make this work. My fear is that regular desktop drives aren't
made to be dragged all over the place, and they might not survive something
like a bounce from car seat to floor. The actual portable drives that are
more durable are expensive.
5. Any backup to a NAS, storage server, home server, or whatever seems like
it would be more expensive than tape.
"mswlogo" <geomills@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1148416484.149360.132550@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Can folks describe what they are using for not so expensive off site
backup. I assume running SBS there are a lot of folks that are in the
same situation that it's a small business and they are try to control
cost and time involve in maintaining the system. Currently the system
is 1 TB Raid 5 (~.7 TB actual space) Single Partition.
Would like a system that someone once a week would just change media
and take a copy home or online backup.
My current choices I know of:
1) Backup to DVD-RW. Can only do critical data (Source Control System)
and Common Shares. Would last a while (6-12 months) before we out grew
it. I don't know of burning software that does scheduled backups. Or
command line way to burn so I can schedule it. Unless I use something
like DirectCD but that probably wouldn't work great.
2) Online service. Probably be limited to critical data only (same as
above). Limited by upload bandwidth of DSL (768kb).
3) Tape system. I expect to do more than just critical data only and
want to do a full image backup. But it gets pretty expensive pretty
quick if I want to image whole system hands free (without switch tapes
in the middle of a backup). I might go with just critical data only
here also which would get us to 20/40 GB fairly cheap. Also not sure if
I want to get into adding SCSI to an existing SATA Raid system.
4) Some folks here suggested standard external USB drives (or network
drives) and rotate them but I don't like the idea of carrying around
Hard Disk drives and you are limited to only 1 rotation without going
crazy.
5) Home grown on-line off-site storage, putting mirror server up at
home. Again bandwidth may be an issue.
.
- Follow-Ups:
- Re: Offsite backup options
- From: Dave Nickason [SBS MVP]
- Re: Offsite backup options
- Prev by Date: Re: SBS 2003 Std to Seperate Components
- Next by Date: Re: Transistion pack and AD
- Previous by thread: cannot connect using vpn connection when on the domain
- Next by thread: Re: Offsite backup options
- Index(es):
Relevant Pages
|
