Advice needed on DLTs/other options

[biot023]

Hallo -- I have been asked to look into backup options for a smallish company that currently has a single tape drive for its backup management.
What's needed is an automatic system that can mostly be left be, so I was thinking maybe a DLT?
But I know nothing of these things, so any advice or pointers that anyone can give me would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks alot,
doug.

Common sense is what tells you the world is flat.

 

[ntinlin]

Well you really have two options.

1. Large single unit drive SDLT, AIT-3 etc. where you would do a full backup onto the tape on a Monday night say and incrementals or differentials onto 1 other tape for the rest of the week.
- Dangerous if either tape fails
2. Basic tape library that would hold a weeks worth of tapes so that you could do full backups every night.
- Still a little dangerous if office burned down of course.

We just bought a Exabyte VXA-2 drive for our remote offices which has 10 slots. UK price is about £1400 and it seems to be about the cheapest auto-loader one can get.

Neill

 

[biot023]

£1400?
Whew...
How risky would the SDLT option be, assuming it wasn't quite as dear?
doug.

Common sense is what tells you the world is flat.

 

[birky]

How much data has the company got?

SDLT is just as risky as any other tape medium...always a risk of failure & with it loss of data.

Have you thought about backing up to disk and then staging off to tape which could then be offsited.

 

[biot023]

We've got a fair bit - about 80-100 gig, at the moment.
One possibility would be something like rdiff-backup (but for Windows, unfortunately).
However, I have absolutely no experience w/ backups & hardware in general, so something w/out too much of a learning curve would be best -- I'm only a poor coder found out of his depth!
doug.

Common sense is what tells you the world is flat.

 

[birky]

for that volume of data I would be tempted just to do a full backup every night & then offsite the tape...just have a tape for each day & then rotate the tapes daily (if you lose server then your data is safe).

If budget is really tight then why not look on ebay and pick up a second user drive..just looked and seen an LTO1 for just over 200 GBP (would give you approx. 150GB per tape with compression).

Yu could also make your life much easier by investing a little bit more cash and getting some 'proper' backup software such as Backup Exec which is quite inexpensive (about 400GBP)...are you UK?

 

[birky]

for that volume of data I would be tempted just to do a full backup every night & then offsite the tape...just have a tape for each day & then rotate the tapes daily (if you lose server then your data is safe).

If budget is really tight then why not look on ebay and pick up a second user drive..just looked and seen an LTO1 for just over 200 GBP (would give you approx. 150GB per tape with compression).

Yu could also make your life much easier by investing a little bit more cash and getting some 'proper' backup software such as Backup Exec which is quite inexpensive (about 300GBP)...are you UK?

 

[birky]

apologies for the double posting

 

[biot023]

No worries, man -- cheers for replying!
I think the 2nd hand LTO1 sounds promising.
Looks like I go back to my boss & get a more exact budget!
doug.

Common sense is what tells you the world is flat.

 

[digitallyskilled]

One thing that we are looking into is using the "Bigger Drive" from LaCie

It basically connects via firewire and comes in all different sizes. (1TB for 999) you can use your backup software to save files to this hard drive then to tape when it is appropriate.

 

[jaymaechtlen]

first you define the need,
then you cost out the options
THEN you determine the needed budget!
if budget << need, then boss needs to adjust brain, and/or redefine problem!