Which option do you recommend for disaster recovery such as when the hard drive on your server dies and why?

You should have made this a multiple choice poll..

You can't rely on just ONE of these solutions...

A second HDD for nightly, and occasional backups remotely is a good way todo it..

But to make sure you don't loose any information, RAID 1/5 is preffered....

I think only one of these solutions:

"Backup Remotely to Another Server (FTP, SSH, etc)"

Is true disaster recovery. Most organizations do not qualify a single hard drive failure as a disaster. RAID mirroring, hard drive backup, and tape backup are routine data protection procedures.

I had a server running raid 1 on wich both harddisk got corrupted. So that didn't help me recovering data from a raid disk is hard because you have to connect to it throw the hardware raid card.

You can't access it when connecting it directly to the motherboard. Lucky me also made backups to another server throw SSH. But afther this happend I placed another harddisk in the server to do daily backups.

So now the server is running raid1 (hardware), (daily) remote backup and (daily)internaly backup. I guess that should be sufficient

I personally perfer tape backups stored securely off site. This sometimes isn't an option if you don't have regular physical access to the server and your datacenter doesn't provide this type of service.

RAID5 or load balanced with tape drive and remote server backup. that should cover it....i think...:D

Originally posted by m00ds
RAID5 or load balanced with tape drive and remote server backup. that should cover it....i think...:D
only just ;) :D

I have to agree that it's multiple choice :D.

Raid 1/5 are not DR things, they are fault tollerence. These are totally different subjects.

First, I'm not a host, but I do manage a good size/busy website. For speed, I backup to a spare drive, then copy offsite for true "DR".

By profession, I'm a database administrator. I'm just used to a copy of a backup on disk (different disk) and a second copy on tape, offsite, at the vault.

Frank

So I ask dumb questions but that's because I'm nuts...

A picture of me ---> :nuts:

Well anyway, thanks for voting. Seems like most people voted for backing up remotely to another server. I always do this. Worse case scenerio: Restore your system then restore your sites via the backup.

But I am also planning on buying a 1U server and really only have room (and cash) for 2 hard drives.

What should I do? RAID-1 or secondary drive for backups?

Feel free to let me know what you would choose...

I would go for the secondary haddisk for backups. Espesailly because I've experienced a system failure with both harddisk with raid1. And their it went, all my data :(

Originally posted by steve93138
But I am also planning on buying a 1U server and really only have room (and cash) for 2 hard drives.

What should I do? RAID-1 or secondary drive for backups?

That's very simple: What is your major concern?
RAID protects against downtime, backup protects against data loss.

Originally posted by Starhost
I had a server running raid 1 on wich both harddisk got corrupted. So that didn't help me recovering data from a raid disk is hard because you have to connect to it throw the hardware raid card.

You can't access it when connecting it directly to the motherboard. Lucky me also made backups to another server throw SSH. But afther this happend I placed another harddisk in the server to do daily backups.

So now the server is running raid1 (hardware), (daily) remote backup and (daily)internaly backup. I guess that should be sufficient Starhost, were you using SCSI or IDE?

Also, who was the manufacturer of that defective RAID card?

It sounds like it was the card that zapped both of your hard drives. I also didn't know that you can't hook up a hard drive to the motherboard if it was initially running from a RAID card ( provided that the RAID card and motherboard both support the same type of drive ).

Originally posted by Walter
That's very simple: What is your major concern?
RAID protects against downtime, backup protects against data loss. That's a good question. I guess it really depends on whether I colocate locally or not. I can not seem to find a decent colo within 300 miles of here. (Danbury, Connecticut area).

If I colocate locally and have access to my server, I would probably not choose RAID since I would be able to fix it quickly. In addition, the less equipment you use, the smaller the chance of failure. I have a soft spot for keeping things simple. :D

If I colocate in a land, far, far away, I would consider RAID as an option.

Well... Looks like I'm going to post a new thread about finding a colo within a 300 miles radius... It really would be ideal for me...

Originally posted by steve93138
Well... Looks like I'm going to post a new thread about finding a colo within a 300 miles radius... It really would be ideal for me...

I know your feelings :) No decent colo next to me...