Network Backup to NAS?

[Seanwho]

I have to produce a solution to backup a netork of 30 win2K Pc's and 5 win2K servers to a networked hard drive (my customer doesn't want to use tape) and NAS seems to be the best option. What is the basic setup I need for a backup solution and is Raid 5 a good idea.

Many thanks

Seanwho

 

[comtec17]

1.) You shouldn't be pitching any solutions to a customer if you do not fully understand its purpose and function especially having to deal with live data and their backups.

2.) There is a lot more planning that needs to take place behind the scenes. For example, Network Bandwidth, Network through-put, total amount of data being backed up nightly, what backup software, what types of disks will be used in the NAS device, etc........

3.) A RAID5 setup is the most practical solution if you are going to be backing up to disk. Again, it will all depend on the findings you produce about the site...

 

[Seanwho]

Thanks for your comments, much appreciated.
I am aware of the Bandwith issues as at the moment the backup is being handled by a 120GB hot swapable drive mounted in a Shadow server using Veritas Backup exec.
We were looking at an option to save the backup data from the hard drive to an optical disk such as gigamo for storage on a daily basis as they will not accept tape (which in our opinion would be the best option) hence the search for an alternative solution.

 

[Chacalinc]

in order to backup the 5 win servers, tapes should be used with the veritas backup exec software (that's the best)... I don't know why someone doesn't want to use tapes, tapes are the cheapest solution! anyway, you could use veritas backup exec to backup the 5 win servers using the NAS as a "pseudo" tape device... just mount a NAS filesystem in the veritas server, create a backup device using that file systems and backup. (may be this is not the best choice, but compliance with the customer requirements).

Now, regarding to the workstations, that's not the same solution, PC ussualy are powered off at nights and opened files are not backed up. A solution is to use software where agents are used, but the agent issue the backup, not the server, so backups are scheduled according to the PC, not the server, and it makes backup directly to the NAS, not using Veritas. One product, as an example, is "1Safe" (

http://www.the1vision.com/products/1safe/

).