Small organization, lots of data, limited resources: what is the best scalable backup solution?

[skyislandmaggie]

We are a small organization with about 2TB of data, and growing. The data is stored on our RAID drive (for things that are changed a lot) and a NAS drive (for data that isn't changed often.) First, I feel that their logic is a bit off in terms of just saving data that doesn't change to the NAS drive, because it doesn't really protect them against hard drive failures, and regardless of whether the data is used frequently or not, it's still growing on a very slow to access drive.

We have looked at cloud backup solutions, but they would be over $300/month, and would probably suck up our already limited internet bandwidth. We would like to back up our data to a source that also does not degrade over time, can be taken off site, and can be managed internally with a little training.

I've noticed that there are some devices out there that are fast, and easy to use, but they seem to be proprietary in how the data can be read/retrieved. That seems to be a risky proposition should that company go out of business, or be purchased by another business, and support of the system be sunsetted.

I'm really just landing on finding a tape drive that can support large amounts of data, and just going with BackupExec or one of the other software companies that have been around a long time. For all the wizards out there on the internet, someone needs to create a wizard that asks you all the necessary questions, and spits out the best backup solution for your organization!

Is there a way to manage this data such that it doesn't bankrupt us in the process? We are a non-profit organization, so finding even 10K to invest in an infrastructure project (even if it's quite evident the importance of it) is a hard sell.

Advice??? Many thanks...
Maggie

 

[goombawaho]

I feel that their logic is a bit off in terms of just saving data that doesn't change to the NAS drive, because it doesn't really protect them against hard drive failures

Assuming the NAS device does NOT have RAID, then YES 100% correct and 100% dangerous/stupid.

I always recommend cloud backup and if $300 is the price of admission then I don't know what to tell people. Mozy shows a price of $409.98 Plan total per month for 2TB. Yes, it's not cheap.

I'm really just landing on finding a tape drive that can support large amounts of data

I think you'd be crazy to go back in time to 2003 when tape drives were still modestly in vogue.

If you want removable, reasonably priced and off-site-able, then think external hard drives or NAS devices with RAID, either of which you could have multiple to take offsite. You wouldn't even need a paid backup program to do it if you used something like RSYNC, robocopy or other free utility to do a copy to the device probably through a workstation with a scheduled task. Then you could have someone you trust rotate the devices per your schedule and take off-site.

I caution people about taking them home as off-site storage due to many potential problems that could erupt, but if that's all you can do then it would work.

You should also embark on a data reduction search for anything that can be deleted or permanently archived. "The only way is up" in terms of data volume is a costly attitude. I know it will go up, but keeping things clean and minimized slows down the process. I see lots of people that keep the original RAR file and the extracted folder - duplicate data. Employee pictures and videos and MP3s on the server can all be nuked.