Network Backup Systems (Cheap or better yet Free)

[girish]

Ok, so, my company has a tape drive for backups and currently we are using Arkeia Light.

But the problem is we have multiple servers and we really need a better backup system. I was wondering, with what I have, what is the best way to backup things.

Right now, the servers do a full dump and push the dumps onto this one main server, then that server backups all that information to Tape. I do an incremential backup (which doesn't really work that well) each day. And every satuday I do a full backup to a separate tape.

I was thinking about switching to DAR or something? Anyone have any other solutions?
http://dar.linux.free.fr/

My company is pretty cheap, so yea, I probably won't get a chance to buy the Veritas's NetBackup Enterprise edition, or anything even close to that.

[hayabusafiend]

Data backup is no place to penny pinch. How much would a loss of your accounting or engineering data cost you?

Seriously consider Brightstor from Computer Associates. Brightstor is just the renamed ARCserve product from Cheyenne. I've used lots of backup software, including unix shell scripts/tar/dump, and ARCserve has been the most reliable.

With 10 years of IT experience, don't penny pinch when it comes to data backup.

[Sane_Man]

He is so right about not skimping when it comes to backup's

Your firm's Disaster Recovery Plan should contain a risk assesment of your firm's value of it's data. If you don't have one, you need one immediately. Companies go out of business just from losing their data. If your data is worth $200,000, that's how much you should be spending to protect it.

Another option is to purchase a service contract with an external firm who can do backup's of your data over a WAN link for off-site storage. I'm sure you are keeping your full backup tapes off-site, correct?

[gabemg]

I use Brightstor as well. It is one of the easier backup solutions I have used. CA has pretty good techincal support as well.

[girish]

See, the problem with the.. "don't skimp on the costs" is that, I dont' decide the budget, I just have the pleasure of working off what I get.

It's stupid corporate bureaucracy... :mad

[Sane_Man]

I totally understand your position, but when you are the keeper of the data, guess who get's blamed when data is lost.

"Stupid corporate bureaucracy" loves to find a scapegoat, so "CYA".


I picked up a nice fat contract a few years back because the IT guy couldn't recover some lost files. I was brought in to replace the backup system, but within 20 minutes I fixed the configuration problem, so they kicked him out.

You may want to consider bringing in a consultant to see if your existing system can be salvaged, or if a different methodology can be used to obtain backups more efficently.

A fresh perspective works wonders.

[girish]

We've been looking for a System Admin to do that work. The last one quit, and I don't think he did a good job, so I was trying to figure out what else I can do.

This isn't really my normal job, so my ass is covered ;)

I wouldn't be taking these chances if my ass was on the line.

I'm just trying to make things better before I get back into my normal job of software development. :) And since I'm incharge of system admin duties for now, and in charge of finding our next admin, I figured, I would instate some policies before the next one comes and screws things up.

But I've been thinking of just using Rsync and using that to back things up. The tape drive is hooked up to the machine that has all our home directories, so the the users are taken care of, the only problem is the servers,. so if I just can rsync the servers I should be good. I think...


Also, as for the off site storage, there is a really nice backup system in our india branch, which is a lot bigger, the only problem is the branch here, it's small and very adhoc

[weak_link]

Having worked for a cheap ass company with NO backup pollicy to speak of before I started, the one area I insisted they spend $$ was on a good dlt and backup system. We went with a quantum dlt1 running veritas. The dlt was a p.o.s. but Veritas works pretty good except for a few Exchange config fits it threw, but now it's happy and so is the owner. They were a small biz but as someone mentioned above, what happens if ALL the financial data goes away? I imagine they would be f'd. This is where someone who does this every day needs to make a good case to the corp raiders running your place to make them understand why this is important. It's awesome that you are trying to help, just be carefull you dn't take the high hard one if something goes wrong. You said it's not your main gig and you're just watching the desk for someone but still...people love to have someone to blame when things go wrong.
*Typical thinking of most corp people: you touched it last therefore you screwed it up. I know you were adjusting my screen-saver a week ago, therefore it's your fault my hard drive died. *
Good luck !

[gabemg]

Is your environment mixed or is it mainly one platform. I have had luck running AMANDA (www.amanda.org) in mixed Solairs/Linux environments. It can be a bitch to set up, but it is free if you have the hardware already.

[girish]

I was thinking about amanda, but it looked like a BITCH to setup. So I kind of just kept quiet.

/. had that guy talking about kdar, that looked interesting, but donno, maybe I'll go for that one. The one I have right now does a decent job, just that the "FULL recovery" sucks, but if you try to recover someones stupidity, like "Oh I deleted that file", it seems to be working great.


It's kind of a mixed env, mostly Fedora however, some redhat and some BSD, and of course, the ever popular, 1 win2k :-P

[hayabusafiend]

You are going to spend more IT time, which equals real dollars and impact on project timetables, trying to implement a free product than what you'd pay for a proven commercially available one.

Moreover, the free product will have "gotchas" and limitations you aren't aware of until it's too late.

Contact CDW, open an account, and buy commercial software at a discount.

[Engel-07]

I hope you guys are performing a complete restore from time to time of your backup. A backup without a proven restore is like having no backup at all. You do not want to explain to your manager or CIO that the restore doesn't work after a problem.

Also, if your data is worth anything, then use an establish company. For auditing purpose, you need to keep your month-end data for approximately 7 years. Five years down the road when you need to restore a file for auditors, you better hope that your free software company that you're using will be around for support.

Good luck on your search for free backup system - or should I say good luck to the new sys admin who will be responsible for it. Three years in creating/supporting backup have been quite boring...