Joined on 07-27-2005
TechSoup Member
I have roughly 17 GB of data that needs to be stored on an offisite backup. It's across 3 servers but I can map network drives if need be so only 1 server actually would need to do the backup. Any suggestions for this amount of data? Thanks as always!
Nightly backup to tape, DVDs, or USB harddrive, and have the person whoever is at that site put the item in a safe deposit box.
If you are looking for a solution where the data is being backed up in real time, you probably won't have a fast enough WAN connection with the provider to make it worth it (despite most vendor's claims about how their product doesn't use that much because of only copying bytes that change blah blah blah). Remember, even if you have a DSL connection, your upload speed is probably 384Kbps tops. Additionally, real time WAN backup service is very expensive, and being that this is a nonprofit discussion website, you probably don't have the money for it.
Joined on 07-27-2005
TechSoup Member
I already have nightly tape backups and backups nightly to a SAN device on a RAID 5 setup, but in catastrophic events, I need to have an offsite backup done nightly or weekly. It doesn't need to be real time backup. I've heard of a few services that offer nightly backup storage but the data vault limit is usually 5 GB or so and I need up to 20 GB. Anyone using anything like this?
One of our customers uses Live Vault (www.livevault.com) online backup service from Iron Mountian. Overall they are satisfied with the service from, but the problem is it doesn't backup network drives. You need to install the client software on each server which you want to backup data from.
They don't charge you for the software, but rather how much data you backup. We have configured the Live Vault service to backup the SQL server and shared file directories. Our customer backups about 60 GB worth of data once, and all the following backups performed through the Live Vault is similiar to an "incremental backup".
You can configure the Live Vault service through their website to schedule a backup during the night and the amount of bandwidth to use.
We sometimes had problems with the service if there is not enough free space on the servers or software conflicts with anti virus, but overall it works does its job.
Joined on 07-20-2005
Hartford, CT
Is there something wrong with the good ol' hard backup in your hand (i.e. tape, backup disk, etc) stored in an offsite location? That's still the most cost effective, especially since your needs don't seem to warrant the cost of an online service. Typical practice I set companies up with is for employees that change data tapes or drives bring them home and store them there for total disaster recovery purposes (i.e. place of business burned down).
Joined on 07-27-2005
TechSoup Member
I live very close to the office, which is a medical center and we store the data for 4 centers so if there was ever a catastrophy that affected the entire area (hurricane again, flooding, etc) we would still have data in a secure location several hundred miles away. We also live near a nuclear plant so, God forbid, something ever happened...
Joined on 07-20-2005
Hartford, CT
You could find someone that doesn't live so close. Or you could personally drop it off somewhere else. Maybe have the organization get a safe deposit box for the company far enough away. I just think for what you described online backup isn't a service you need to pay for.
Hi,
Check out this
site. It offers free 5GB of storage from AOL company. It is an awesome online back-up. I have been using for 1 week only. AOL just announce this site last week
You might also consider Amazon S3 (yes that's right from amazon.com)
Amazon S3
Again, you're going to be limited by the upstream speed of your connection.
Joined on 10-06-2006
TechSoup Member
Online backup is far better than it used to be. The bit about copying bytes that change...not worthy of a blah, blah in my opinion..
When I change 1 word in my 300 page novel in Word, it only backs up a smidge, not the whole 40MB whopper.
There are some cost efficient online backup solutions, and you probably will find that a nightly data backup will only take a short time, even with slower data rates.
Anyway, most services (the one I work for included) offer free trials. Ours doesn't even want a credit card. If you decide not to subscribe, we just dump the data (we couldn't read it if we tried, anyway)
Kevin S. Peterson
Backup To The Web
http://www.backuptotheweb.com
Joined on 04-08-2003
TechSoup Member
Since you are only backing up 17GB of data, Disk or Tape would work fine. You may want to consider how quickly and under what circumstances you would need to retrieve the backups.
Since 17GB is so small, I might suggest having a two tiered system. Use robocopy (from micrsoft, included with XP resource kit - FREE!) to copy all files over the network to one computer This should be a SECURED - not shared or public computer. This computer can act as your staging ground / online backup for quick recovery of information. Then backup the folder from that computer using DVD or Tape or USB HD. Actually, for 17GB you could easily have daily, weekly, and monthly backups all on one disk. Just do a little batch file and scheduling to make it happen.
USB drives are nice in that you don't need specific hardware to restore your backups. You can easily retreive one file, without loading a tape and going through a LONG restore process. DVDs are cheap and easy, but only store 4.7 GB. In my experience, any backup that requrires user intervention to load multiple backup media equates with "backup doesn't get done regularly."
You may also want to look at encryption to make sure that a lost disk doesn't mean lost data. This is important if the backups contain any financial or personal data. TrueCrypt is free, supports batch files, and works well.
Joined on 10-11-2006
TechSoup Member
For the web hosting system, we use a offsite backup system. Its pretty simple. We actually mirror the main system on the backup server once a night and make the backup on the backup server. its always diffrencial because the backup is local to the backup server so we can do a full archive on the mirror tree. the system is on unix but you can use a backup software like bacula that has a linux/windows client.
Joined on 07-27-2005
TechSoup Member
Well, I've decided to go with iBackup.com's service. For $34/mo. or $345/yr I can have nightly backups offsite in addition to my nightly onsite backups. Since I work for a medical company, offsite is necessary in case something catastrophic ever happened to the area. Floods, fire, tornado, bombs, that kind of stuff. Thank's for all the info and suggestions. I'll let you all know how it works when I install it next week.
Joined on 10-16-2006
TechSoup Member
I've been using and recommending iBackup for quite some time, and although it generally works well there are some gotchas. For example, they used to offer the option of encrypting your data on their end, but now it is only encrypted during transmission unless you use an old version of their software. So I don't think they are HIPAA-compliant. (They have a Professional version that does include encyption of stored data, but this version has a limited feature set compared to the standard iBackup software.) I've also had some problems with file locking after the backup process ends, which makes it impossible for end-users to move or delete files on their own server. It's hard to find anything comparable to iBackup for the price, and I still enthusiastically recommend it for some organizations, but you do need to be prepared for some surprises.
Joined on 10-06-2006
TechSoup Member
dschrag,
I'm curious about the HIPAA-compliancy you mentioned. Are you saying that files backed up to iBackup are not encrypted?
The client software I we use encrypts the data before it is sent, and it is stored encrypted. In fact, we try to remind our customers that if they lose their 'encrpytion key', we don't even have it..
You also mentioned file locking. Do they not use a volume shadow copy type of system?