I need a new backup strategy-what's yours?

[cgwillard]

I am looking for some guidance for our network backup job. Here is our current situation:

·We back up 215 GB every night from 10 servers.
·We use 2 Sony AIT tape drives.
·We also use an Exabyte tape library with AME tapes.
·Daily backup job takes a total of 40 hours on three separate drives.

I’m looking for better ways to backup more data in less time. So, I’m checking around to see what type of backup strategies everyone else is using.

Can you share the following information with me?
·How often do you back up your data?
·Do you perform full, incremental, differential backups, or a combination of these?
·How much data do you back up?
·How long do your backup jobs take?
·What type of backup software do you use?
·What backup devices do you use?
·Do you have a written backup strategy/disaster recovery plan that you could share with me?
·Do you store any backup tapes off-site?

Thank you very much for your help!
cgwillard
Only 25 years until retirement!

 

[snorkel]

·How often do you back up your data? Every night
·Do you perform full, incremental, differential backups, or a combination of these? full
·How much data do you back up? 150-175 GB on about 4 "data" servers
·How long do your backup jobs take? The longest takes from 7:00 pm to 5:00 am
What type of backup software do you use? Arcserve for Netware 7.0
·What backup devices do you use? Two Sony AIT2 50/100 drives one in a changer
·Do you have a written backup strategy/disaster recovery plan that you could share with me? Yes we do, but it's old and needs updating
·Do you store any backup tapes off-site? Yes we store offsite. Every Wednesday is the Weekly tape and we have 8 of them. Every Thursday it is picked up and stored offsite. Also the Month End tapes are picked up and stored off site permanently.

If you want to get into this in more detail, you can leave your e-mail address and we can correspond directly.

John Daniel
Nework Manager
Business News Publishing

 

[Fioon]

Hi,

I'm looking for a good backup&recovery product. Was choosing in between Veritas & Arcserve 2000 .

What is your suggestion

Fioon

 

[cgwillard]

I only have experience with ArcServe, and I have been pleased with it. I would recommend it. Just be sure you purchase a tape drive/library that will accommodate future growth. cgwillard
Only 25 years until retirement!

 

[DR4G0L3N]

cgwillard,

There were a couple of details missing: what is you SLA for restoring data if there is a disaster, and what's your budget with which to work ?

The rule of thumb is that data restoration takes twice as long as the backup, so if you have an SLA that says 8 hours down time max, then you will need to have your backups finish in 4 hours.

I've got several DLT 7000 tape libraries and internal drives that do a full backup on about 250+ GB each night, using a GFS rotation scheme. My biggest job is a mail server, with 120 GB worth of mailboxes. That takes 4.5 hours to backup to a library connected to the server. The media pool is 67 DLT tapes, and it will only get bigger. Media is $120 cdn a tape.

The media is stored in a media cooler overnight in a fire safe, stuck in the opposite corner of the building from the server room.

If your company is serious about the their data protection, it's going to cost to update your technology. I'd want at least a DLT library on the bigger data source servers to minimize the amount of data going across your network. Just for comparison, the DLT Library we have on the mail server cost $15,000 cdn 3 years ago, and they don't make them anymore. Newer Super DLT libraries will be more like $30,000...

Hope that helps put things into perspective for you. I've been living with the trials and tribulations of running the backups for our site for 4 years now. It's been more grief and used more or my time than everything else I do put together.

D.