Real Time Backup But Batch Deletion could this be possible?

[mhadi]

Hi,

We after finishing a tiring season are planning our Backup Strategy for next Season.

This season we encontered a problem

Multiple users were working on some set of files. The Team Leader was the only one having priviligies to delete the files. Unfortunately he mistakenly deleted some folders and after few seconds he realizes his mistakes. Meanwhile another user was copying the data on the server unaware of what had happend. Due to this the Deleted Data Recovery processes failed to recover complete folders. The leader came to us and ask for the backup copies of the project but at the time of backup those files were not even created

After this sad event we decided to have such a backup system that will Backup/Update the file on Real Time i.e as soon as it is created, Edited, Rename etc but on deletion will not delete it from the backup instead it keeps the copy till the end of the week and notify the administrator about the file.

Is there is any Software/Hardware solution available in the market that would enable us to accomplish our goals?

Thanking in Anticipation
mhadi
GIS Programmer

 

[Yrrk]

good question.. the short answer is no - nothing like that exists.

IMO, your best bet to truly prevent someone from accidently deleting a file is some kind of file quarentine system. I haven't used this software but it's just one example of many:

http://www.bytware.com/products/sgrb.html

Of course you didn't mention a platform nor where you store the files so that doesn't help. You also didn't mention what kind of budget or sized company you have or how much data you create regularly or change/backup. However, I know of some near-real-time technologies you could take advantage of such as:

1. NAS/SAN devices pretty much all have snapshot capabilities where a volume can be "backed up" in seconds. E.g. network appliance NAS devices can store up to 255 snapshots. You could leverage that kind of technology by storing your files on there (user home directories) and depending on your requirements, take frequent snapshots automatically.

2. Tivoli Storage Manager is a backup product that for files will always do incrementals. If you used this as your backup solution, i could envision a scenario where whatever machine stores your files could be backed up as frequently as you like.. You point it at a path and it will only back up the files that have changed. Even better it supports disk (in fact recommends it) so the initial backups would be fast if anything actually gets backed up. Even better it supports terrific file level retention settings so you could keep as many versions of files as you like or for as long as you like (or any combination there of). The con? it's expensive and you didn't mention your budget.

of course there is always education (or a floppy noodle to the head) to keep people from doing stupid things

 

[Yrrk]

stumbled across this interesting article today. Can't say I know anything about it but it sounds similar to what you're looking into.

http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/vitalfilebackup

 

[birky]

Hi

You could also look at backup solutions that allow you to backup files at block level rather than file level such as Evault, Attix5 etc.

This would allow you to schedule regular backups during the day as often as you like without causing any impact on your systems or network as only the changed blocks of any file are being backed up.

 

[mhadi]

Hi,
Thanks very much for of these replies
I think our management will prefer to buy a software solution for this problem
I like the idea of file quarintine system
Server Platform is Windows 2003 server
When a WinXP client connect to it remotely and delete a file it ask the client to delete it permenantly. I think if we could be able to change this queston to information i.e File is moved to Recycle Bin Contact administrator for permenant deletion etc. This could really be helpfull.
Any Sugesstions
mhadi
GIS Programmer

 

[McAndKA]

StorageTek has an EchoView appliance based product that journales every block of data and allows you to return to any point in time.

For a software only solution, you may consider IOMEGA's Quiksync. This can copy files when they get closed or at time intervals. The copies are versioned and you can recover as easy as dragging the file back.