Workgroup Backup - What Media?

[Rod Speed]

And yet most of us use software to do the backup that will alert
(email) when a drive needs cleaned, sends full backup reports to us
each day, and for those that don't have third party software we will
right simple batch scripts that will email the backup/verify logs to
us and we can see the errors if any.

The problem with USB drives is reliability.

Doesnt have to be USB. There are a number of docking stations
available now that are very similar to tapes in many many ways.

The most obvious difference is that you do have to be much more
careful to not drop the drive when removing it from the docking
station and putting the drive in some form of robust storage for
offsite storage, but I bet that ends up much more reliable than tape.

And its much faster and much faster random access for the occasional restore of a file or few.

Tape is very reliable as long as you clean it and don't buy those cheap third party
drives, DAT- 72, LTO2/3 are good, but anything Travan should be avoided.

Hard drives are much more reliable.

Yes, a good LTO2/SCSI system will cost about $1000 with 10 tapes,

It can cost a hell of a lot more than that to backup what he wants to backup.

A few say 5 1TB drives costs a lot less than that too.

but the tapes last more than a year,

Hard drives last a lot longer than that.

store in small areas, and you can easily take them "off site" for DR.

Hard drives are almost as easy when used with a docking station.

USB drives work also, but they are MORE prone to failure and bulky
and of you buy as many as are needed to comply with SOX or other
audits, you actually spend more than of you bought tape.

Nope, not in your example.

 

[Rod Speed]

Yes, I mentioned that in the second post somewhere.

I have a much larger network than the OP but I still use something
similar to what I described to him.

I backup most things as a "backup to file" to just a simple USB
1-Terabyte HardDrive. The jobs all repeat nightly. Then once a week I backup the USB drive to tape and put it in a
fireproof safe. I keep 4 weeks of tapes before recycling them.

You can make a case for 5 1TB drives instead.

It takes a full day for the Tapes to run,...hence why I don't do it daily,...the Tape drives would never stop.

And 5 1TB drives would fix that problem too.

All the servers themselves run hot swapable RAID Arrays. So in reality the loss of a drive doesn't have much impact
in the first place. The backups are more to protect data corruption or deletion than they are to protect from failed
drives.

 

[BigAl.NZ]

... rest of post deleted...

This is really good advice - but I would add 1 more step to it.

Buy TWO "big fat USB Hard Drives".  Every Friday, copy everything on the
one in the office to the the spare one, then take it home with you.

Someone else made the sugegstion to do pretty much this. In the
computer that will act as the image repository, add a big fat 1TB hard
disk - fixed. Also add a 1TB removeable disk, either using a hot
swappable, USB drive or even a NAS drive.

Nightly incrementals, weekly full with to the fixed 1TB and a script
to duplicate that weekly to the removeable drive which then goes off
site.

For the removeable disk I was thinking of something like:
http://www.icydock.com/product/mb558sp.html

Storage Craft Shadowprotect on each desktop would then let me backup
to the central repository, and they can all be controlled from one
node.

-Al

 

[BigAl.NZ]

Consider this.  A lot of posts are suggeting expensive and elaborate backup
systems.  I'm not "knocking" those,..they're good stuff,..and they cost
losts of $$$$$ for a reason.

The reason I gave a very simplistic solution is,.....because,.....well quite
simply,...you have 7 machines in a Workgroup.

After you have spent tons of money on real Servers,..with a real Active
Directory Domain structure, with a real Mail Servers, a server based
enterprise level Anti-Virus/AntiSpam/Snti spyware system, business-critical
Application Servers taylored by specialized vendors specifically for your
type of business,......and then maybe even a full time IT person to take
care of all of it,....then I'll suggest a big fat juicy expensive Tape
Jukebox systems with all the trimming that cost more than my car.

I think with the state of the economy right now spending has to be
determined with the big picture in mind.

But for now if you want something a little better than a simple USB drive
try the Linksys NAS200 with a pair of Terabyte drives rigged up with RAID-1
Mirroring for redundancy.  It is only around $100 without the drives.  It
can email you with alerts if it detects problems with either of the Drives
it contains.  It is still "home-user" quality but it is a step up from a
simple USB drive.

Nice, and I have looked at the product page. I could see this would be
easily added, and you would have to stagger the backups so as not to
kill the network, but how would you incorporate a "off site/2 sets" to
this suggestion?

I also need to workout yet how much data we are talking about.....

Cheers

-Al

 

[BigAl.NZ]

But it is still a workgroup.  Nothing is centralized.  He either needs one
of those in every workstation or go through all the "headstands &
cartwheels" to backup the other machines from one workstation.

I was thinking of putting StorageCraft Desktop on each client and
having the clients push the backup to the NAS. Once installed
Storagecraft can administer each client from a centralised node.

With a shared USB drive, or a cheap low-end NAS like the Linksys NAS200 all
the machines can easily push their backup to the storage device
independently with their own copy of NTBackup on different schedules.

As above.

But then I guess you could use the DAT drive to backup the USB drive oncea
week.  That is actually how I do it here,..they just aren't DAT drives,they
are DLT and LTO's.

I think the biggest problem here,...that he doesn't realise he has yet,....
is the "7 machines in a workgroup".  Yea, I keep coming back to that.

What I would do in his case is buy a "real" server with built in
hot-swappable RAID, and promote it to a DC .  Encourage users to store the
"important stuff" on shares on the server or use AD's Folder Redirection to
store the MyDocs and stuff on the Server.  Have a good quality internalTape
Drive in it that was big enough to hold everything on a single tape and do
nightly backups.  Then I would do a full system state backup of the Server
OS at least once a week.  If the tape was big enough then do everythingwith
system state nightly.
The worksgroup would be gone.

Yes, true, but I simply dont think they have the money to fork out for
this.

I wouldn't like it being a single DC but if backups were made diligently it
would be survivable. I'm not a big fan of SBS but that might be a good
solution.

It would be a bit more money,..but it would be money well spent and his
business would be in a better postion for future expansion.

Storagecraft will let you restore a full image of a PC to different
hardware too. Very handy.

 

[BigAl.NZ]

With a shared USB drive, or a cheap low-end NAS like the Linksys NAS200 all
the machines can easily push their backup to the storage device
independently with their own copy of NTBackup on different schedules.

You seem to know a lot about these NAS200's. How do automate the
backup of the NAS200? I assume this could be done to a external hard
disk attached to the USB port of the NAS200?

Cheers

-Al

 

[Arno]

Thought tape was a complete re-write system whereas
disk can be just changed files? Which is quick.

You can do both with tapes and with disks. That really
is not the question.

And with NAS if you lose your OS, do you not
also lose your network connection, making
restore a bit more difficult?

For that you have a recovery system that you use to restore
the backup.

I suppose you can put an OS with network support
on CD and boot from that, but it sounds a bit more
involved than a quick restore with Drive Image.

Personally I would use Knoppix for that. Full network
conenctivity, full local disk access. Restoring a system
image is allways an "involved" process, were you need
to know what you do. Does not mean it has to take
a lot of work.

Arno

 

[Leythos]

Hard drives last a lot longer than that.

I've had dozens of "drive cage" drives that have failed last year,
everything from 250GB through 500GB and with less than 1 year on them,
and considering that many of them are only used 1 time a week, that's
terrible reliability.

Also seen a mess of USB external drives that are used daily failed in
under 3 months, but not a dead failure, they would fail under load of
large files, but not small ones.

I still have tape drives that work after 10 years, but I don't have any
hard drives that have lasted that long.

 

[Phillip Windell]

You seem to know a lot about these NAS200's. How do automate the
backup of the NAS200? I assume this could be done to a external hard
disk attached to the USB port of the NAS200?

Yes, you could back it up to a USB Drive plugged into the back of it. I'm
not sure about automation,..you might have to do that externally, like from
a PC.

I've only messed with one,...two if you count the fact that I had to RMA the
first one

I spent a lot of time cussing it at first, but once I got used to its
"concepts" and it limitations it isn't bad for what it is.

The NAS is just a "dumb" storage point on the network. It isn't actively
involved in the backup. The backup, in the context of what I have been
saying in this thread anyway, is performed solely by the local copy of
NTBackup on the machine experiencing the backup at that moment as it would
be "fired" by the Scheduler that can be configured right in the NTBackup
GUI.

The NAS200 "appears" on the LAN just as if it was a PC and presents "shares"
to the users. For a while it even showed up in Network Places just like a
PC,...but now it isn't,..don't know why, don't really care.

User accounts for those shares exist only within the NAS200 itself,..so you
would have to match the accounts/passwords to what is used on the LAN in
"workgroup style" (there's that word again). That's fine for the Backups
since you can create a common account to run the NTBackup via the Scheduler.

The NAS200 sharing abilities is about the equivalent of Windows98. Share
Level only,...nothing at the File System Level. The Partioning and
formatting is supposed to be EXT3 (like Linux). I installed the utility
Ext2IFS on a laptop hoping I could read the drive contents with a Windows
machine if the NAS hardware ever died, but I still couldn't see the
files,..don't know why.

There are some things that the documentation doesn't tell you (did I say
lousey documentation? Sorry I meant to..). One of the things is this when
dealing with the RAID-1,.. if you use that configuration:

1. Always use the drives in the same Drive Slot they started out in. If you
swap them around,..NAS no worky.

2. If you swapped them around and then put them back the way they were
supposed to be,....maybe NAS worky,..maybe not,...so just don't do that.

3. If a drive in the mirror dies and you replace it make sure the new drive
is totally blank and has no partition at all what-so-ever. If you have to
put it into a Windows machine and use Disk Manager to delete the partition
then do it.

4. If you pick it up, don't point the bottom toward the floor. The drives
are heavey enough that the little plastic door may pop off and the drive may
slide out and hit the floor. It may even go halfway down a flight of stairs
like mind did,...with the plastic door following along side it. They are
SATA drives,..so no cable,..they just "push" into place and it may not be a
real tight push. The doors only snap over the drive,..no hinges. So keep
you hand over the back of it when you carry it around.

It can also be used via HTTP or FTP. So you could expose the FTP or HTTP to
the Internet just like it was a Web or FTP Server and people from outside
can transfer files in both directions and you won't be exposing your LAN to
the Internet while doing it. On ours I created a single user account on the
NAS for the "public: to use. That account is denied access completely to the
main drive so they only have access to whatever you plug into the USB ports
on the back of the NAS. In our case this is always going to be a
ThumbStick,...they can not do too much damage to a ThumbStick I would think.

Ours is not used for Backups,...it is only for file storage for our
Production Department which is mostly video material. The "public" in this
context are some of our clients who need to get video material to us that we
use to create TV Commercials. As you might guess, we are a TV
Station,...and NBC News affiliate.

Anyway, if you keep in mind that it is a "home user" product and don't
expect it to do more than it was designed to and realize that it may have
its quirks,...it is a pretty good product for the price. I started out
hating it, but I kinda like it now.


--
Phillip Windell
www.wandtv.com

The views expressed, are my own and not those of my employer, or Microsoft,
or anyone else associated with me, including my cats.
-----------------------------------------------------

 

[Phillip Windell]

But for now if you want something a little better than a simple USB drive
try the Linksys NAS200 with a pair of Terabyte drives rigged up with
RAID-1
Mirroring for redundancy. It is only around $100 without the drives. It
can email you with alerts if it detects problems with either of the Drives
it contains. It is still "home-user" quality but it is a step up from a
simple USB drive.

Nice, and I have looked at the product page. I could see this would be
easily added, and you would have to stagger the backups so as not to
kill the network, but how would you incorporate a "off site/2 sets" to
this suggestion?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

If you use RAID-1 mirroring it is kind of its own backup.

The NAS would *be* the backup,...you don't have to "backup the backup" and
the mirroring would make it redundant in and of itself. It is
"networked",..not USB,..so it can be located in a differnt place from the
PC,..a safer place,...just as long as you have full Ethernet bandwidth to
it,...I wouldn't want to run it over a WAN link.

But you could back it up to Tape periodically if you wanted using any PC
with a Tape Drive in it,.. or plug a USB Drive into the back of it and copy
the material to that drive and take it off site.


--
Phillip Windell
www.wandtv.com

The views expressed, are my own and not those of my employer, or Microsoft,
or anyone else associated with me, including my cats.
-----------------------------------------------------

 

[Phillip Windell]

You can make a case for 5 1TB drives instead.

Yea *I* could easily.
The people that "ok" the $$$ won't

The Tape Drives were already there before I came up with my little scheme,
so didn't have to buy those.

The 1T drive was bought to backup video material off of our Video Automation
System (we're a TV Station) during a troublesome installation of a new
Automation System. After that, the drive sat unused,...so I "borrowed" it.


--
Phillip Windell
www.wandtv.com

The views expressed, are my own and not those of my employer, or Microsoft,
or anyone else associated with me, including my cats.
-----------------------------------------------------

 

[Rod Speed]

Leythos wrote

(e-mail address removed) says...

 

[Rod Speed]

(e-mail address removed) says...

I've had dozens of "drive cage" drives that have failed last year,

I wasnt talking about drive cage drives.

Yours must be ****ed cooling wise.

everything from 250GB through 500GB and with less than 1 year on them, and
considering that many of them are only used 1 time a week, that's terrible reliability.

Yes, but thats be cause they are ****ed cooling wise.

Also seen a mess of USB external drives that are used
daily failed in under 3 months, but not a dead failure,
they would fail under load of large files, but not small ones.

Makes a lot more sense to use eSATA instead, they dont do that.

I still have tape drives that work after 10 years,

And hordes have had them fail a hell of a lot quicker than that.

but I don't have any hard drives that have lasted that long.

Then you dont have a ****ing clue about how to cool hard drives.

 

[Leythos]

Then you dont have a ****ing clue about how to cool hard drives.

And you seem to need to be rude and make a LOT of assumptions in order
to keep your believe system working for you.

Having worked with computers since the 70's, having designed boards and
industrial control system, I think I know a little about cooling and
computers as well as the components that make up the overall system.

Maybe when you stop acting so immature people might listen to you.

 

[Arno]

Nice, and I have looked at the product page. I could see this would be
easily added, and you would have to stagger the backups so as not to
kill the network, but how would you incorporate a "off site/2 sets" to
this suggestion?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

If you use RAID-1 mirroring it is kind of its own backup.

No. It is downtime reduction and backup against disk failure.
It is not a general backup. Things like accidential deletion
or corruption (often noticed only later), wirus infection, etc.
happen and RAID1 does not help at all. A general backup does.

The NAS would *be* the backup,...you don't have to "backup the backup" and
the mirroring would make it redundant in and of itself. It is
"networked",..not USB,..so it can be located in a differnt place from the
PC,..a safer place,...just as long as you have full Ethernet bandwidth to
it,...I wouldn't want to run it over a WAN link.

You actually have to have several _independend_ backups, i.e.
not on the same storage hardware.

But you could back it up to Tape periodically if you wanted using any PC
with a Tape Drive in it,.. or plug a USB Drive into the back of it and copy
the material to that drive and take it off site.

That would work.

Arno

 

[Arno]

I've had dozens of "drive cage" drives that have failed last year,
everything from 250GB through 500GB and with less than 1 year on them,
and considering that many of them are only used 1 time a week, that's
terrible reliability.

That sounds like a systematic problem, for example rough handling.

Also seen a mess of USB external drives that are used daily failed in
under 3 months, but not a dead failure, they would fail under load of
large files, but not small ones.

That sound very much like a thermal issue, i.e. overheating. Many
USB drives have inadequate (read: disgrace to the engineering
profession) cooling. A particular offender are older Maxtor USB
drives, because they has 1) bad cooing 2) disk that take a lot of
power under load and 3) disk that are very sensitive to heat.
Others are affected as well. Incidentially, hdsentinel
(http://www.hdsentinel.com) allows you to get drive temperature
form USB drives underWindows. Anything over 45C under load
is really bad.

This kind of "engineering" makes me wish we could forbid those
responsible to ever do engineering work again. Then, maybe, this
was a business decision, i.e. planned failure.

I still have tape drives that work after 10 years, but I don't have any
hard drives that have lasted that long.

HDDs are sensitive and need to be treated right. No mechanical
shock, adequate colling, a full SMART selftest (surface scan)
every 2-4 weeks, SMART monitoring and surprises become a lot
less likely. HDDs are not "install-and-forget" devices and
anybody that treats them as such is bound to lose data.

Arno

 

[Leythos]

HDDs are sensitive and need to be treated right. No mechanical
shock, adequate colling, a full SMART selftest (surface scan)
every 2-4 weeks, SMART monitoring and surprises become a lot
less likely. HDDs are not "install-and-forget" devices and
anybody that treats them as such is bound to lose data.

I'm very much aware of what drives require, been doing this since before
there were MFM drives and a 10MB disk pack was the size of a coffee
table.

 

[Arno]

I'm very much aware of what drives require, been doing this since before
there were MFM drives and a 10MB disk pack was the size of a coffee
table.

Did not claim you do not. My first HDD was a MFM 65MB drive.
However technology has changed a lot since then and I do
know quite a few people that do not do regular surface scans
on their drives.

Arno

 

[Leythos]

Did not claim you do not. My first HDD was a MFM 65MB drive.
However technology has changed a lot since then and I do
know quite a few people that do not do regular surface scans
on their drives.

Almost every computer I use or own is a server class system with more
than 3 cooling fans for the case, drives are not the typical residential
class drive, but, having used about every USB drive on the market in the
last few years, I can honestly state that I trust them as much as I
trust a politician. I've had tape systems last more than a decade, when
properly maintained, with new tapes every year.

We just took a job where another IT company spec'd the servers and
backup devices, they spec'd REV 35 and REV 120 drives, USB External,
and I'm not impressed with them either.

 

[Arno]

Almost every computer I use or own is a server class system with more
than 3 cooling fans for the case, drives are not the typical residential
class drive, but, having used about every USB drive on the market in the
last few years, I can honestly state that I trust them as much as I
trust a politician. I've had tape systems last more than a decade, when
properly maintained, with new tapes every year.

No surprise here. I used to remove my USB drives from their cases
every 2-3 months to check them. I do thermal checks. Still, from
my experience with some SCSI storage from SUN, consumer class
drives that are treated well, asr about as reliable as
enterprise class ones, whit the occasional bad batch in both.
They are generally slower though.

USB cases have a history of mistrating drives. Prepackaged
drives are sometimes even worse than self-assembled ones.
So far I have found two cases I am reasonably happy with when
used with lower-power drives.

We just took a job where another IT company spec'd the servers and
backup devices, they spec'd REV 35 and REV 120 drives, USB External,
and I'm not impressed with them either.

Indeed.

Arno