Review this backup strategy

[Asgorath]

3 person office

* ReadyNAS (NV RNV2-S2-0000) w/ 3 hard drives (Seagate Barracuda ES ST3320620NS 320GB) in RAID1+ hotspare . Full backup every Monday with differentials for every other day.
* Iomega Rev on a (1 at home, 1 in the drive, 1 on the shelf) rotation. With last week plus this week thus far being backed up. I could use some help with a good rotation strategy.
* Syncback SE installed on each person's machine. When you're in the office you're working on the ReadyNAS. When you wanna take work home use Syncback to sync to a memory stick. When you're at home work on the memory stick. When you're back in the office sync your memory stick to the server.
* ReadyNAS and network hardware on a APC BR900 UPS
* Every month a full backup is moved onto DVD+R DL for archive. The archive is kept off site.

What do you guys think? This is a whole lot less expensive than building a full blown server and a full tape backup strategy. This is a law office, so there isn't a huge volume of data so this should be enough capacity to hold it.

[Madwand]

Have you done restoration testing?

Are you verifying the DVD writes? And have you tested DVD reads? I'd be cautious about this part, for when these images become important, having seen frequent problems with DVDs.

[Asgorath]

I forgot to mention. All backups will be run into encrypted zip files. If I wanted to I could do a SHA hash of the zips when they're created and have that hash saved with a time stamp in the same directory as them. That way you know there has been no file tampering/ corruption.

Just a thought.

What is the life on a DVD+R DL or DVD-R DL ?

[cyr0n_k0r]

Although I hate to do a shameless plug, you should really be considering an automatic offsite solution.

http://www.korcomputing.com/faq.html

My company does nothing but backup law offices and the like. Dentists, doctors offices, CPA's, etc.

[Asgorath]

Although I hate to do a shameless plug, you should really be considering an automatic offsite solution.

http://www.korcomputing.com/faq.html

My company does nothing but backup law offices and the like. Dentists, doctors offices, CPA's, etc.

That's a great idea. Ok...I'm gonna revise my strategy.

RAID 1 + Hotspare ReadyNAS
UPS for ReadyNAS and Networking gear
SyncBack SE for the clients

Keep their day to day stuff on the ReadyNAS. Keep it all synced up on there.

Then daily do a diff backup to the remote backup. No rotating media schedules to deal with, but a whole lot more reliability. Sweet.

[Asgorath]

I like your service. Why is it better than me just using a standard webhost assuming I can take care of the syncing part?

[cyr0n_k0r]

I like your service. Why is it better than me just using a standard webhost assuming I can take care of the syncing part?
To acheive the kind of reliability and security that our software package achieves it would take you many different applications.

automation (batch files)
compression (zip, winrar)
encryption (zip integration, or 3rd party program)
transfer (ftp, VPN)
storage (remote HD's)
re-copy (robocopy, rsync)

All of those features are rolled into 1 package that takes care of everything for you. It's a set and forget option.

I'm not saying our software is better or worse than any other off the shelf backup software that can be had at any best buy. Every company and their mother makes some form of backup software. The key items for our service is offsite encrypted storage, and replication . We offer web based or software based restore and have 2 real time copies of customer's encrypted data online at all times.