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Tapes or Disks?
- Thread starter MD5150
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- Thread starter
- #3
Great. I have one follow-up question if you will:
Would the backup device really be another NAS device?
I'm envisioning a device with swappable SATA drives and re-using them periodically after an off-site transfer. Can a NAS device be used this way?
Appreciate the help,
Mike
backup-to-disk (B2D) configurations *ussualy* are connected through a FC channel to an ATA-based disk array, but there is nothing wrong using a NAS devices, you can have a software issue (i.e. the backup software, as legato, veritas, etc.) ask the provider, but a NAS is still a storage.
What software will you use?
Cheers.
Chacal, Inc.
What software will you use?
Cheers.
Chacal, Inc.
- Thread starter
- #5
Haven't decided on the software yet. I'm still reading up on which protocal would be best(NFS, CIFS, NDMP) and which software brand/version supports what. There seems to be so many options and configurations with pros/cons to each. It's scrambling my brain reading up on all of this. But you guys are a big help.
Mike
It is not recommended nor best practice to keep all your backups on disk for long periods of time. Backup to Disk is a short term solution to assist with the amount of time to backup multiple servers during a short backup window. It is not meant as a tape replacement for the long term by any means.
- Thread starter
- #7
I want to agree with that point as I'm learning that there are issues with backing up to disk, such as, defragmentation and the disk needing a file system, but it's hard to ignore the reliability, fast backup, and fast restore speeds. A lot of articles talk about this. But for simplicity, I suppose that I'll go with tapes since I'm not much of an expert in this area.
Maybe replication is a better solution. I've always liked the concept of replication, so I'm thinking that maybe two replicated NAS devices and one DAS tape-drive would be a good setup. I read that the two NAS devices would stay synced-up in normal mode, and when it was time for a backup, the syncing would stop, NAS-1 would copy to a separate backup volume on NAS-2, then the sync would resume and the backup would be run from the backup volume on NAS-2 over to the tape.
Anyone running this kind of setup?
Mike
How much data? For low flow stuff you could hobble something together with ntbackup (to DAS), robocopy (to a NAS share), and scheduler (to coordinate things so they don't step all over each other).
For larger volumes of data, look at the offerings of the storage vendors. Netapp in particular touts the benefits of snapshots (local), snapmirrored or snapvaulted to a nearstore (you guessed it, ATA drives), to a remote nearstore or ndmpcopy to tape. Other vendors have similar offerings for which volumes could be writtem on the comparative advantages and disadvantages.
For larger volumes of data, look at the offerings of the storage vendors. Netapp in particular touts the benefits of snapshots (local), snapmirrored or snapvaulted to a nearstore (you guessed it, ATA drives), to a remote nearstore or ndmpcopy to tape. Other vendors have similar offerings for which volumes could be writtem on the comparative advantages and disadvantages.
WestCoastKid
Vendor
why compromise?
We are looking into getting one for ourselves.
We are looking into getting one for ourselves.
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