to those with multi-terabyte storage, what's your backup solution?

[jarthel]

tape? hdds? daily prayer?

just to get a feeling what's a cost-effective solution.

thanks for the reply

[Cyant]

At a certain point a second independent SAN that do incremental backup of the first is probably the best cost effective solution (and the fastest). And I don't mean mirroring the first array because that's not safe at all hehe. But a real backup strategy on a second multi terrabyte hard drives array using cheap 1TB or 1.5TB Sata drives.

A multi-terabyte tape solution can quite costly, I am sure at a certain point a second SAN with hard drives is more cost effective and future proof.

[nitrobass24]

I use WHS and have duplication turned on for everything in case of disk failure.
For me most of the stuff on my server is a digital copy(backup of a hard copy). I mostly have blurays.
The other stuff like recorded tv can be downloaded if lost and I don't really care about it.
My personal videos and photos get backed up to mozy.

[MScrip]

to those with multi-terabyte storage, what's your backup solution?Another multi-terabyte system?

:)

[Thuleman]

tape? hdds? daily prayer?

just to get a feeling what's a cost-effective solution.
Tough to say without knowing your requirements. At my place of employment I manage roughly 40TB of data, but most of it is static thus there's no need for nightly backups.

Cost-effective is totally relative. Is this personal use, business use, mission critical, what's your current computing (hardware, software) and, networking environment, what's acceptable downtime and restore windows, etc. etc.

There's no real point in writing a detailed response without knowing some more details first, it would just be a scattershot at best.

[jfkriege]

I have a second system that I plug in once a week to back up the first; otherwise it is turned off and completely unplugged from the wall and ethernet. Critical data is also backed up to a system of tray mounted drives nightly, and taken off site weekly.

I am mildly paranoid, but even if my house burned down, I could have my business at full capacity again in under a week (if I felt like working).

To me, the on site 'backup' is simply a convenience thing. I dont feel like recreating all of that content. The actual backup is done by taking critical data off site. Then, and only then, do I count that data as safe.

[unhappy_mage]

My important data is kept in a Subversion repository offsite, which backs up daily over the internet to my home machine. Other than that, it's all recoverable data: music, movies, games. As long as Steam is up I can recover all my games, and as long as the place doesn't burn down I can recover music and movies... and if it does, I have bigger worries.

[Ockie]

Daily prayer is the cheapest solution.

Hard Drives are the other solution.

I back up to other disk based boxes and turn them off when not using.

[odoe]

I'm still working on mine. When I'm done with my current WHS build, I plan on doing a second NAS box, probably using a BSD or nix copy everything there. Once I do that, I'm thinking of moving that box off-site probably to my parents house and backup remotely after that. I'm just working in the sub 10tb range though, so cost wise it's not as bad as what some others are probably going to spend. I've spent years ripping my cd collection, some of which are not even readable anymore. No way am I going through that again.

[epimetheus]

I'm working on a low power box running MySAN iSCSI software to back up my WHS to.

[gjvrieze]

Daily prayer is the cheapest solution.

Hard Drives are the other solution.

I back up to other disk based boxes and turn them off when not using.

ROFL, yes, until something happens!

[-=Antimatter=-]

ROFL, yes, until something happens!

Name a non-disk based solution that can backup dozens of terabytes for cheap?

Having a second box around for backups and taking it offsite is a pretty easy to do.

[Ockie]

Name a non-disk based solution that can backup dozens of terabytes for cheap?

Having a second box around for backups and taking it offsite is a pretty easy to do.

I think he was talking about the prayer comment, but I'm not sure.

[djBon2112]

None. I can't afford to build another machine with the same capacity. But nothing on the RAID is irreplaceable. All my backups are on it, but they're also on their sources so if either one goes down I still have it. The rest of the data is all downloads, movies, music, etc. which can be replaced. When I have more money and more drives I'll probably move to RAID 10, but for now my 5-disk RAID 5 array is it :)

[rogue_jedi]

RAID5 to help protect against single disk failure, crossed fingers to protect against something catastrophic. If I had the money, I'd have a pair of systems, with different drives, and mirror them. Still, most of what I store is replaceable.

Now, for actual important data (business use) tape library with daily incremental backups. That reminds me, need to get around to setting up the backup tape backup.

[MrCrispy]

A cheap solution, not as automated as NAS/WHS is to get a few external eSATA/USB 1/1.5TB drives like Fantom/Cavalry. These are frequently on sale for ~$110. Use a sync program to backup data. If and when you build something like WHS/unRaid , they can always become part of that.

[[LYL]Homer]

Yo dawg, I herd Ockie uses WHS to backup WHS, so he can have a backup of WHS on WHS while he uses WHS.

[Pocatello]

Homer;1033837502']Yo dawg, I herd Ockie uses WHS to backup WHS, so he can have a backup of WHS on WHS while he uses WHS.

Tru Dat!

[DeathFromBelow]

I have a server with RAID 5 for redundancy. Vital/irreplaceable data gets backed up to an external drive.

[ganesh21]

I use WHS and have duplication turned on for everything in case of disk failure.
For me most of the stuff on my server is a digital copy(backup of a hard copy). I mostly have blurays.
The other stuff like recorded tv can be downloaded if lost and I don't really care about it.
My personal videos and photos get backed up to mozy.

I turn on Duplication on WHS for all important data - music, picture, document, application, development stuff

I backup my document, picture, development stuff on DL-DVD once a month.

I have a 1.5TB External storage to back up - music, picture, document, application, development stuff externally.

[Easius]

I have a server with RAID 5 for redundancy. Vital/irreplaceable data gets backed up to an external drive.

Very similar here. Raid 5 with nightly back up of key data to tape drive.

Also have a client set up running Raid 5, nightly back ups to tape drive, and over the network backup to hot swap drives swapped daily and taken home at night.

[hmz]

I only make backups of music, documents and pictures, so it doesn't really require lots of space. 250GB is enough, so I keep it compressed on another drive.

[sneeker]

Lots of stuff is replaceable, All my documents etc are synced to a nas though every night.
Some stuff goes onto dvd's, the rest just sits there until I need it.
Most of my music gets copied to an external drive every couple of weeks or so.