Corporate backup

[ciggwin]

I'm ordering a new data server and with that comes the need to upgrade our backup system. Management wants to know why TO THE CLOUD!!!!!! is not a viable alternative for backup/restore.

My main points why TO THE CLOUD!!!!!! is not the direction we should take:

1. LTO technology is cheaper in the long run (5+ years)
2. Faster backup/restore speeds
3. Just as reliable, if not more reliable, than online backup
4. Does not require bandwidth (i.e. restoring mid-day)
5. Online backup has different privacy laws

Is this agreeable? Are there more points to add?

This is what we currently have:
HP StorageWorks Ultrium 460 LTO2 tape drive
400GB LTO2 tapes (C7972A)
Symantec BackupExec 10d
It currently takes over 17 hours for a full backup, and that is only backing up our file server + Exchange. We have a NAS device that holds all "My Docs", old client files, and all the IT files. The NAS device is an Iomega StorCenter Pro 150d (RAID 5) which backs up to... another Iomega Storcenter Pro 150d (RAID 5). I think I just made everyone cringe a little bit.
File server: 60 GB
NAS: 250 GB
Exchange 2003: 75 GB max (around 50 GB)
TOTAL: 360+ GB

With the new data server, I will be getting rid of the NAS devices and putting everything on the server. Therefore we will need more storage space. The tape drive is basic - it only holds one tape. Therefore not only would backups take all weekend, I would have to come in and change the tape.

Here is what I am proposing:
HP StorageWorks LTO-4 Ultrium 1760 SAS Tape Drive in 1U Rack-mount Kit
HP LTO-4 Ultrium 1.6TB RW Data Tape
Symantec BackupExec 2010

As far as pricing goes, I priced the LTO4 solution out at approximately $5500 ($1100/year for 5 year life)
I priced out online backup at around $2010/year ($10,050 5year)

I know for a fact that the tape drive is going to be sufficient 5 years from now unless the company EXPLODES and increases their data by some insane amount... and I don't see that happening. So I would argue that the tape drive, as long as it does not malfunction, will be good for more than 5 years. The tape drive we currently have is exactly 5 years old. Yes, I realize the contradiction in what I just said.

Is the proposed backup system ideal for a small corporate environment? Is there anything else I am not thinking of? We have 50-60 users and less than 500 GB of data (at the present time). Thanks for any input/advice.

 

[drescherjm]

As far as pricing goes, I priced the LTO4 solution out at approximately $5500 ($1100/year for 5 year life)

That is more than the total that we paid for our 2 drive 24 slot LTO2 autochanger (Exabyte Maximum 224) 4 years ago. I know LTO4 is more expensive but this does not seem to be a good price being that I see LTO5 single drives going for around $2500 and LTO4 drives going for $1600 to $1800.

 

[ciggwin]

That is more than what we paid for our 2 drive 24 slot LTO2 autochanger 4 years (Exabyte Maximum 224) ago. I know LTO4 is more expensive but this does not seem to be a good price being that I see LTO5 single drives going for $2500 and LTO4 drives going for $1600 to $1800.

The $5500 includes LTO4 drive, tapes, and all software/licenses for Symantec BackupExec. The drive itself I see for just about $3000 which includes the rack mount.

 

[drescherjm]

The $5500 includes LTO4 drive, tapes, and all software/licenses for Symantec BackupExec.

I think my changer came with BackupExec but I chose not to use that. I am not sure how much that would cost if I had to purchase that plus licences. I am using an open source backup software with a support option that I decline to use so the backup software is free.

 

[ciggwin]

I think my changer came with BackupExec but I chose not to use that. I am not sure how much that would cost if I had to purchase that plus licences. I am using an open source backup software with a support option that I decline to use so the backup software is free.

Amanda? Bacula? I'm unaware of any others.

 

[drescherjm]

Amanda? Bacula? I'm unaware of any others.

bacula. Although I warn anyone that this requires linux for the server part. There is code / a port to work on windows servers but that code is not well supported. All of our servers are linux so it works well for us. We have been using bacula for 8 or so years ( I think ). Currently we have 100 LTO2 tapes allocated and 80 DLT and have successfully done over 23 thousand individual backups with a mix of 30 to 50 windows and linux machines that get backed up each night. We do daily incrementals, weekly differentials and monthly fulls with a 1/2 year retention period on system backups. On top of that we have a lot of archival that gets backed up more than once and never recycles..

BTW, I wanted to mention that agree with you on your other points in the original post.

 

[ciggwin]

bacula. Although I warn anyone that this requires linux for the server part. There is code / a port to work on windows servers but that code is not well supported. All of our servers are linux so it works well for us. We have been using bacula for 8 or so years ( I think ). Currently we have 100 LTO2 tapes allocated and 80 DLT and have successfully done over 23 thousand individual backups with a mix of 30 to 50 windows and linux machines that get backed up each night. We do daily incrementals, weekly differentials and monthly fulls with a 1/2 year retention period on system backups. On top of that we have a lot of archival that gets backed up more than once and never recycles..

BTW, I wanted to mention that agree with you on your other points in the original post.

I don't have any Linux servers and I don't have any hardware available to create a Linux server. The reason I am looking at BackupExec is because that is what we currently have - BackupExec 10d.

 

[vraa]

I don't have any Linux servers and I don't have any hardware available to create a Linux server. The reason I am looking at BackupExec is because that is what we currently have - BackupExec 10d.

You don't have any toasters?

 

[drescherjm]

I don't have any Linux servers and I don't have any hardware available to create a Linux server. The reason I am looking at BackupExec is because that is what we currently have - BackupExec 10d.

That is obviously fine. Definitely go with what you are used to.

I was also thinking about cost because of the decisions I made that led me to the 2 drive LTO2 changer. I purchased a 2 drive 24 slot LTO2 changer over a single drive 24 slot LTO3 drive changer at about the same cost (just under the $5000 item price so I did not need any special appoval) because I wanted the peace of mind to know if 1 drive died that I always had a second one at my facility that I could use. I guess that is not essential but it was one of my considerations. I believe the changer came with a 2 year warranty but after that we paid for a year but then canceled the support because the price was like $750 a year for a changer I can get on ebay for $2000. Medical imaging research dollars we have to keep spending in check.

 

[OldSchool]

There are certainly more reasons than just financial why you would want to take such a route, as you have enumerated. Management types are easily swayed by clever advertising and buzzwords like "the cloud". I don't know about you, but I certainly don't trust some random hack with my data. People who aren't well versed on reliable backups tend to discount tape as some sort of archaic technology, but this could not be further from the truth. Tape is the most reliable backup media, period. To hell with "the cloud"...

 

[GeorgeHR]

It looks like you have a back up to hard drives in place as well as a back up to tape. That seems reasonable.

I guess a full back up to tape or to disk would take about 17 hours. And I suppose your incremental backups are under an hour.

---

The first thing I notice is that your backups are very close to the capacity of a single tape. In the next 5 years you will be using more than one tape so you will need to change out tapes to finish the full backup. I guess that could mean starting a backup on Thursday afternoon and changing tapes Friday morning.

---

I would buy a low end computer or NAS with removable hard drives. Set it up by the employee exit door and back up to hard drives. Generate several backups. Keep one backup on the NAS, take one home (or to a bank safety deposit box) from time to time. 2TB drives might hold 3 full backups and incremental backups for the 3 full backup periods.

Disk backups are great because they can get you back up and running in less than an hour - even if you take a lunch break.

---

Restoring from the cloud might take a day - 1 day air of your data on a hard drive.

 

[drescherjm]

I guess a full back up to tape or to disk would take about 17 hours.

Should be a lot faster than that. I backup 2TB in less than 1 day on LTO2 with non highly compressable data. LTO4 is > 3 times as fast as LTO2 provided your source is a raid and you network can handle the bandwidth.

 

[ciggwin]

It looks like you have a back up to hard drives in place as well as a back up to tape. That seems reasonable.

I guess a full back up to tape or to disk would take about 17 hours. And I suppose your incremental backups are under an hour.

---

The first thing I notice is that your backups are very close to the capacity of a single tape. In the next 5 years you will be using more than one tape so you will need to change out tapes to finish the full backup. I guess that could mean starting a backup on Thursday afternoon and changing tapes Friday morning.

---

I would buy a low end computer or NAS with removable hard drives. Set it up by the employee exit door and back up to hard drives. Generate several backups. Keep one backup on the NAS, take one home (or to a bank safety deposit box) from time to time. 2TB drives might hold 3 full backups and incremental backups for the 3 full backup periods.

Disk backups are great because they can get you back up and running in less than an hour - even if you take a lunch break.

---

Restoring from the cloud might take a day - 1 day air of your data on a hard drive.

The reason we have the disk backup (if you want to call it that.. what happens if the second one shits the bed) is because before I got here, they ran out of room on the data server. So they bought the Iomega devices and moved old client files and My Docs files to that to free up space on the data server.

I want to put it ALL on the data server and back it up to tape. I feel that this is the best way to organize our data as well as back it up. All in one place, all backed up together, nothing is getting missed. Single point of failure

 

[marsboer]

You shouldn't rely on the same piece of equipment for more than 5 years unless you can live with it breaking down, so that point is not valid in most professional setups.
We exchange our servers before they break, even though they still are more than capable to do their work. It's just common pro-active management.

You also have to remember that a tape based backup requires a manual well thought out routine for exchanging tape sets. You can't just stick 20 tapes in a robot and be done with it if you want to be safe from fire etc. That the backup can be fully automatic all year without physical intervention (just monitoring) is in my opinion the single most attractive argument to select online backup where both alternatives are viable.

I find that a online backup service is (if serious and professional of course) the best choice if your data amount is within reason given your bandwith to your backup solution. Since incremental backups doesn't decrease speed when restoring from disk like with tapes you will also restore those corrupted/deleted files faster in most day to day cases.

Since we went online at work, I have never looked back. It's just so much better in day to day usage. I would only choose different if we had huge storage needs. I would still use a disk based storage solution for backup, but within my company using high bandwith instead of a 3. party provider.

 

[GeorgeHR]

Should be a lot faster than that. I backup 2TB in less than 1 day on LTO2 with non highly compressable data. LTO4 is > 3 times as fast as LTO2 provided your source is a raid and you network can handle the bandwidth.

But the original poster indicated that his tape backups take 17 hours. That would suggest that the tape drive is not the limiting factor.

The original poster seems to want a tape drive and is happy with it.

 

[ciggwin]

You shouldn't rely on the same piece of equipment for more than 5 years unless you can live with it breaking down, so that point is not valid in most professional setups.
We exchange our servers before they break, even though they still are more than capable to do their work. It's just common pro-active management.

You also have to remember that a tape based backup requires a manual well thought out routine for exchanging tape sets. You can't just stick 20 tapes in a robot and be done with it if you want to be safe from fire etc. That the backup can be fully automatic all year without physical intervention (just monitoring) is in my opinion the single most attractive argument to select online backup where both alternatives are viable.

I find that a online backup service is (if serious and professional of course) the best choice if your data amount is within reason given your bandwith to your backup solution. Since incremental backups doesn't decrease speed when restoring from disk like with tapes you will also restore those corrupted/deleted files faster in most day to day cases.

Since we went online at work, I have never looked back. It's just so much better in day to day usage. I would only choose different if we had huge storage needs. I would still use a disk based storage solution for backup, but within my company using high bandwith instead of a 3. party provider.

Thank you very much for your input - I have been looking for a post regarding online backup for a corporate environment and you've provided some great info!

But the original poster indicated that his tape backups take 17 hours. That would suggest that the tape drive is not the limiting factor.

The original poster seems to want a tape drive and is happy with it.

You could say I'm "stuck" on a tape drive, but only because it is what we currently have (why change if it works just fine?) and I would rather have complete control over the data (not to mention have the experience of setting up and managing the backup system) rather than "set it and forget it" like I would do with online backup. However I realize I need better reasons than that to present to management.