Backup Strategy
For our backup strategy, we rely primarily on our Intel Storage System SS4000-E. I have read a lot on blogs and in magazines about backup solutions and strategies, and I am so comfortable with this solution. Still, I have nightmares about loosing a server. We’re not using tape any longer
See, the SS4000-E is my hero because every night she takes an image of whichever hard drive on the network I want her to (with appropriate client software of course) and saves them on her 2TB array.
We are also FTP’ing the nightly backups of our ACS database to a server out of state. Since that data is really the most mission critical data we have, I wanted to make sure we’re keeping it off site.
What do you think? Is this a wise solution for backups? What do you use in your organization?
March 31st, 2008 at 5:08 am
Being a tech-head for a living I still get the cold shivers whenever I read of someone backing up their hard disk to another hard disk.
I know they are much more reliable. I know the backup drives are not stressed as much and I know that data recovery is cheaper than it ever used to be but I still get the chills. And yes, I read that it is an array :)
That said, your solution is certainly easier than ours and likely to be more reliable. Backup dumps a daily mon-fri differential to a.n.location and then Saturday a full backup is done. This is then compressed (if needed) and burnt to DVD. The DVD’s are then labelled and stored in the Church safe.
I have yet to convince the Church of the need to take backups offsite or even to have immdiate daily backups (diff or full) and best I’ll likely manage is to convince them to stump up some cash and use something like Mozy for our (current) small needs.
April 1st, 2008 at 10:54 pm
Stuart, you’ve given me a lot to think about. Thanks a ton for taking the time to share. Those are the same concerns that haunt me as well.