Hello all,


I am looking into a backup solution for a few machines for hosting, However....tape drives and media are Disgustingly Expensive (1000's of dollars easily for the drives alone.)


Does anyone have any other recommendations for backup/archival storage ?


Thanks


--GB

This is probably not the best way as it uses a ton of bandwidth but you could setup a server and have your production server send the files you want to backup to the newly setup server.

Less expensive then tape but also bandwidth entensive.

secondary hdd?
raid?
perhaps your DC will arrange somthing?

Originally posted by The Laughing Cow
secondary hdd?
raid?
perhaps your DC will arrange somthing?


Oh, I had planned on using some type of raid system to begin with. (Probably start off with Raid 1 or maybe Raid 0+1 with an IDE system).

I was mostly asking about Archival storage.

(If someone wants a copy of their website,whatever from 2 weeks ago or somethig like that)


BY the way, what is a DC ?

Originally posted by The Laughing Cow
raid?


cough... cough ... RAID is not a backup solution ... cough ... cough ...

If you are able to arrange something like private-net (you may need your own switch), then having a central backup server can be useful. Basically you have a free transfer from all servers to this backup server. Once in a while, perhaps weekly or monthly, you can transfer the files from this backup server somewhere off-network. This is where you will pay for bandwith, but if you are on cogent network and/or the off-network backup server is also on cogent network, this will be a non issue :)

To be honest i've only skimmed RAID. I was under the impression that one setup of RAID copied all your files from one drive to the other in real time? Is that not so?

...

Correct me if i'm wrong


RAID 1 - Mirror / Shadow set
Normally two or more disks that are an exact copy of each other.
Best read performance
Good write preformance
Not much worse than a write to a single disk, does double data transfered, disks on different channels makes a difference.
Fanciers systems allow for removal (split/cleave) of mirror for backup.


Perhaps i'm unsure what backing up is? I always thought of it as a copy of a file. Does it necessarily have to be stored seperatly? It's not as if the case is gonna set on fire. More likely a drive will die and the other will be intact.

please correct me :)

if you use RAID1 for backup, then what happen if your user accidentally removes his/her file? Can you get his/her file back? Of course not, since his file will be removed on all RAID1 drives ...

Same goes if a user needs his previous copy (6 days old) of source code. Can you give it to the user if you are using RAID1?

RAID1 is good, but it should not be used for a backup purpose since it's not intended as a backup solution ...

First off there is a difference between backups and archiving. Secondly...

RAID is not a backup!

EVER!

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=%22raid+is+not+a+backup%22

If your PSU goes and fries all your components, what does RAID do? Nothing.

If you have a severe case of PEBKAC one morning before your coffe and rm -rf, what does RAID do? Nothing.

If you get a virus and it corrupts every magnetic media in your sysem, what does RAID do? Nothing.

How do you incremental back up with RAID? You cant.

RAID does not protect your data, its provides redundant (where do you think the R comes from?) hardware to protect agsint a harddrive failing while sometimes offering increases in performance.

There have been numeroous threads on this at computer forums everywhere.

How RAID works:

http://www.storagereview.com/guide2000/ref/hdd/perf/raid/index.html

Some threads:

http://arstechnica.infopop.net/OpenTopic/page?a=tpc&s=50009562&f=24609792&m=8550941235

http://arstechnica.infopop.net/OpenTopic/page?a=tpc&s=50009562&f=24609792&m=3450950035

Hell, Ill throw all of these in for good measure:

http://arstechnica.infopop.net/OpenTopic/page?a=tpc&s=50009562&f=24609792&m=6790919215

http://arstechnica.infopop.net/OpenTopic/page?a=tpc&s=50009562&f=24609792&m=1700926784

http://arstechnica.infopop.net/OpenTopic/page?a=tpc&s=50009562&f=24609792&m=7190907105

http://arstechnica.infopop.net/OpenTopic/page?a=tpc&s=50009562&f=24609792&m=3340976484

http://arstechnica.infopop.net/OpenTopic/page?a=tpc&s=50009562&f=24609792&m=3260936374

http://arstechnica.infopop.net/OpenTopic/page?a=tpc&s=50009562&f=24609792&m=9040969664

http://arstechnica.infopop.net/OpenTopic/page?a=tpc&s=50009562&f=24609792&m=1370908074

http://arstechnica.infopop.net/OpenTopic/page?a=tpc&s=50009562&f=24609792&m=1430929954

http://arstechnica.infopop.net/OpenTopic/page?a=tpc&s=50009562&f=24609792&m=1650907954

http://arstechnica.infopop.net/OpenTopic/page?a=tpc&s=50009562&f=24609792&m=5840950554

http://arstechnica.infopop.net/OpenTopic/page?a=tpc&s=50009562&f=24609792&m=1530933454

http://arstechnica.infopop.net/OpenTopic/page?a=tpc&s=50009562&f=24609792&m=1610949744

http://arstechnica.infopop.net/OpenTopic/page?a=tpc&s=50009562&f=24609792&m=4250994734

http://arstechnica.infopop.net/OpenTopic/page?a=tpc&s=50009562&f=24609792&m=2270917524

And of course, no RAID thread would ever be complete without mentiong Murdock's rant, entitled Moore's Law, my Heiney!, about backup solutions:

http://forums.2cpu.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=21142

OK, I see we are all on the same page with RAID systems now.

:D


I think the backup server is a good idea...I hadnt considered that as an option.

(Of course for archiving, unless I spent LOT$ on hard drives that wont work, but for a seperate backup it will.)


SO, does anyone have an idea about good archival storage of backups other than tape drives?

(I'm hoping to save myself some greenery here)

I wasnt planning on using cogent for bandwith.

(So far I am kicking around the idea of SDSL to start with and them branch off and get some T1's after that.)

I don't think it's really necessary to come across in such an offence way to what I said. I asked questions and I feel that the way some of you replied treating me as a newbie and practically beating me from subscribing to this thread. I made a suggestion to the best of my knowledge, which was wrong mostly - no need to take it out on me.

Unsubscribed.

Can I use RAID 1 and make backup weekly on the RAID 1 disks itself ?
It seems ok , i think...haha...low cost.

Raid-1 is safe.. unless someone deletes the content or fire, tornado etc destroys it physically

Originally posted by kktsang
Can I use RAID 1 and make backup weekly on the RAID 1 disks itself?

That will work great. The RAID 1 will protect you from hardware failure. In case your harddrive tanks, the array will function, but it will disreguard the failed drive. It will usually send you an email or the like in case you are not right next to it and let you know that the array is down. You run to ComUSSR, buy a harddrive of the same size, hot swap it out and it rebuilds the array in the background, not missing a beat.

Now in case of a virus, or pebkac or something else, a weekely backup to DVD-R or tape will do well. How much data are you looking to back up?

Keep a rotation of maybe a month, that way in case a user comes to you and asks for something 2 weeks old, you just flip through your small binder of DVD-R's and pull it out.

Originally posted by kktsang
low cost

As the saying goes: speed, reliability, or cost?

Pick two.

Bottom line is it all depends how important your data is to you. If a server going down for 1 hour costs you $300, than it is perfectly reasonable to spend $1000 on a back up solution, as getting a server back up and recovering data can take 3+ hours easily.

Originally posted by apollo
Raid-1 is safe.. unless someone deletes the content or fire, tornado etc destroys it physically

Exactly. And when someone deletes a file, whats the first thing you reach for?

I reach for my backups.

Oh, I hadnt considered using CDR's.

(I guess I made the blanket assumption that I would need gigs and gigs of storage.....but then again thats very possible I wont.

After all, with 4 domains going right now, I'm only using 13 megs worth of storage)


and once I start NEEDING GB worth of tape storage, I'll be able to justify the cost)

Originally posted by greatbeast
Oh, I hadnt considered using CDR's.

(I guess I made the blanket assumption that I would need gigs and gigs of storage.....but then again thats very possible I wont.

After all, with 4 domains going right now, I'm only using 13 megs worth of storage)


and once I start NEEDING GB worth of tape storage, I'll be able to justify the cost)

CDRs are good back up media, but only if you arent backing up 200GB. That would require 285 CDRs for each backup. And even if you didnt have to sit there and switch out a new CD every 3 minutes, it would still take 14 hours and 15 minutes to burn the CDs at 3 minutes apiece. And this isnt counting the time for swapping out CDs, and setting up your burning program in between each burn.

If you have less than 1GB to back up, there is no reason it cant be done weekly (or daily if you want to). With data fitting on 1 or 2 CDRs, you can easily keep a months worth of backups on hand incase someone all of a sudden is missing a file.

A backup solution like that as well as RAID for redundancy will protect you agsint hardware failure, viruses, and PEBKAC (which I just fell victim to 10 minutes ago, why oh why did I select the entire folder and hit the delete key), and pretty much anything else. Backing up to CDR and than taking them offsite, even just bringing them home each night, is a great way to make sure things are well protected.

Good luck! :)

Why not setup SAN or NAS? Those two are completely different in architecture but serve the same purpose, backup.

SAN - Storage Area Network (think of a LAN with backup servers)
NAS - Network Attached Storage (I've seen 2u NAS servers with 100+GB capacity scale up to TB)

Dell has some sample of NAS servers and I think rackspace offers NAS servers as well (tape driven).

I posted this once - http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=31955&highlight=NAS+AND+SAN

my 0.02 cents :)

NAS is a great solution, but too big for his needs. Right now he has 13MB to back up. This word normally isnt in my vocabulary, but Im afraid I am going to have to say it. Its overkill. It seems he has one server and four customers. Throwing something like this in the mix is going to cost him a lot more than a small 3ware controller and a few harddrives.

I really dont like NAS though, I much prefer SAN, but thats just me. In either case, its really overkill for now. If a year from now, he has 10 seervers and a few TB between all them in customer data, Id defintly recomend pricing out both of these options. But given what he has to back up, its overkill.

heheh yeah....you have a point.

You're absolutely correct. (I DO have one server and 4 customers.)

Who luckily for me while I've been playing and experimenting for the past year with different configurations, have been pretty understanding.

(But since the service is free--they can't really complain)


(SO I am thinking that the CDR solution will be the perfect short term fix--along with maybe hooking up a file server and copying to that too)

How 'bout just creating a compressed file of your data and/or site files and emailing them. I wrote a couple of scripts to handle my backup tasks for my ded server:

mysql backup: http://web.abumami.com/scripts/amrssbosm.html
web pages backup: http://web.abumami.com/scripts/hindsite.html

I created a bunch of cron jobs using these scripts to back up about 5 sites (web content and data). Works real well and it's free. Chews up a bit of bandwidth, but the compressed files aren't really that big so it doesn't matter so much. I have the files emailed to a web-based email account - "off-site storage" :) You could also have the files mailed to yourself or to your clients.