Help me with My Hard Drive backup solution

[funstuie]

Hello all

I have recently setup and new backup server using a IBM with Hot Swappable SATA HDS and I backup to this server over a GigaBit network.

The server has
4x internal 250GB IDE Hard Drives
1x internal 80gb SATA (this hd contains the OS)
2x External 300GB SATA Drive Drives (in the Hot-Swappable bay)

I am using Robocopy and dos batch files to do the backups at the moment and it seems to be working OK at the moment but I am worried it and want to check with you guys.

The backups go like this
Daily backups:
IDE 1: Monday
IDE 2: Tuesday
IDE 3: Wednesday
IDE 4: Thursday
SATA 1: Friday (this drive is changed weekly on a 4 week rolling basis)
SATA 2: Not in use at the moment - I use this drive for special occasions like when I upgrade a server or there has been a failure etc.

I do incremental backups daily to each of the drives and the Friday drive is rotated weekly on a 4 week rotation. On the last day of the month I do a full backup and this drive is stored offsite (I use the storage company who stored our DATA Tapes, they send special storage boxes for HDS and these are stored offsite)

My problem is I don't think I am doing enough backups or the right backups. I have a lot more confidence in the Hard Drive backups after our mail server completely died and I was able to get it up and running in 6 hours. Whereas our payroll server died and I was not able to restore from the DLT tape2 (luckily I had taken a complete backup to my laptop a few days before).

The offsite storage is working ok but the company is rubbish - they lost 2 drives in a month, luckily they found them and they were still working - so I need to find a new one.

I am backing up the following:

Notes server
File Server
PDC
12 Web servers (the necessary code is backed up to DVD)
2 x App Servers
Payroll Server

and I want to make sure I am getting it right. This project was just thrown at me and I was told to sort it out. My boss hates tapes and he is happy with the HD solution.

So any advice is welcome fellas

Cheers
Stu

 

[funstuie]

Also I was thinking of upgrading to one of these

http://uk.insight.com/apps/productpresentation/index.php?product_id=MOSM074#extendedspecs

(insight is my hardware supplier)and filling with drives all of which are removable.

 

[funstuie]

anyone?

 

[clonny2]

Nothing wrong with your implementation, just make sure that you have an offsite stratgey as well. Is once a month adequate for offsite. Worst case scenario you lose a whole month of data.

I would normally recommend offsite once a week depending on the amount of data that gets backed up.

Another idea might be utilizing some sort of NAS device as well.

I also recommend testing your backups and your disaster recovery strategy with some sort of regularity. Just to be sure.

>---------------------------------------Lawrence Feldman
SR. QA. Engineer SNAP Appliance
lfeldman@snapappliance.com