Backup / recovery / availability
- From: "jamie" <news@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 27 Jan 2007 10:05:19 GMT
As sbs admins we know the importance of a robust data protection system, but
how much attention is actually paid to the process.
I know i thougth using sbs backup protected my data and allowed me to
reinstall in the event of a recovery. But its far from simple to do a bare
metal recovery. It took a good few days, which is obviously down time for
clients. I am now of the opinion that sbs backup and restore is unacceptable
for anything other than a missing file in todays IT-centric world. A lot of
my clients simply cannot afford to be without connectivity for extended
periods.
I see four specific data protecton issues and was wondering what you lot
think of best possible solutions with lowest cost. After all, clients want
enterprise level service and availability with sb costs.
1. Users deletes something that they shouldnt.- SBS backup is ideal for this
but does not allow users to retrieve the info themselves. I remotely
administer my clients and response times could be 3-4 hours, which obviously
is client productivuty time lost. Backup exec appears to be a good option to
allow user recovery of data.
2. Mechanical Server failure (HDD) - use a robust raid system alowing hot
swap. I can think of no simpler solution.
3. Server failure (either temporary of really bad failure)- Enterprise users
use clustering and other high cost solutions to provide redundancy.
Unaccaptable costs for clients. Shadowcaster from double take seems to offer
the lowest cost backup server with auto switching between the two i can
find. (not tested tho). A simple bare metal recovery option for server when
repaired allowing restore in a couple of hours seems to be Intelligent
recovery from symantec.
4. Destruction of site and data. - Offsite storage of data is solution but
how? This is a tricky one as tape is obvious solution, but the backup window
is problematic. I am onsite at most clients once a week, a weeks woth of
data loss is not acceptable. Therefore daily backups, but that meens a user
performing tape swaps (and for me that has disatster written all over it).
Which makes me ponder IP based data storage (datacentre) as backup exec and
intelligent recovery can work over IP, but there are serious bandwidth
issues. I am sure day to day 'mirroring' would be fine on a high speed
connection. But initial imaging and resultant restore would be anywhere from
30-40 gig (initial clean install) to 2-300gig (or more) on working system.
Thats a LOT of data. A local remote site would be best solution to this as
initial image could be generated on network then moved to remote location
and day to day running performed. When required server moved back locally to
restore. But that means a second site (my office) increased data costs for
me :(
5. Anything i have missed?
There is a lot of info there and a lot of cost involved on something that
may never be needed. But what do you think?
Jamie
.
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