Backup Solutions

[Matt Midgley]

Hello,

Just interested to find out about the best way people backup servers. First of all, is using a raid configuration considered a backup or a form of backup? Secondly, does anyone use the backup software provided with windows server systems? It's a bit awkward in the way that you can only back up to either tape or HDD. I think it would be better if a DVD solution could be implemented. Also, theres no way to backup to a remote site is there? I know you could backup to a local networked HDD, but not any further than that.

How easy is it to recover just a small portion of a backup from a tape? For example, a user wants their site restoring to a previous date.

Thanks,
Matt

 

[Matthew]

RAID is an excellent solution to keep the server online should a drive fail. We had a drive fail recently in the office here and the red light came on and the spare (4 drives in total) kicked in automatically. I then just got another drive and slid it in the front (with out powering the server down) and told it to rebuild the new drive. It was very nice and nobody stopped working here, they just did their work as normal.

I have had problems with MS Backup in that backups seem to corrupt and things go missing in the backup. I have tried restoring several times and spent hours trying to recover data from them.

WinZip has worked pretty good but requires a lot of human intervention and needs to be run at a quiet time on the server which is about 4am UK time.

The best option I have heard of is a system that mirrors every file identically real time over a network. As a file changes the change is copied on to a backup server and there are no performance issues. There are several benefits for this type of system. These are that the backup is always current, the backup is off site and the whole system doesnt slow down at all.

However, you are probably aware that this is not a cheap option and needs a good performance server with a good RAID system in place.

It come down to spending money and finding the balance of working manually or paying lots to get something decent in place.