Backup Concept: What do you think about this?

[ndee]

We have to do a backup concept in our company and me and another guy are assigned to do this. Here's our Infrastructure:

1 SQL Server with mission critical data (about 3GB Data per day)
1 Telephony Server, also mission critical (not too much data, about 1GB)
1 File Server, also very important stuff (In total about 60GB)

Now my plan would be to get a dedicated Backup computer with a SCSI Card and get a HP Ultrium 460 Tape drive. It holds 200GB uncompressed data and I think that's ok for us cuz in the near future, we will get a lot more data so I don't wanna go with a small 100GB tape which we have to replace again.

What do you guys think about that concept?

Thanks in advance.

 

[CigarSmokedByClinton]

Use a dedicated backup computer with 4 Seagate 120Gig hard drives in RAID 0+1. Should be about the same price, but your backups will be faster.

 

[n0cmonkey]

How long do you keep backups?
Do you have backups sent off site?
Do you get all of your data during certain times, or is it a 24/7 operation? When do you plan to run backups?
Do you have a backup application in mind? Does it have a "live" client for your SQL server?

A dedicated machine with a bunch of hard drives is not a backup solution :roll:

EDIT: Oh yeah, the tape will probably be fine. Of course, search on google to see if there are any major problems with it. 😉

 

[DaveSimmons]

Originally posted by: CigarSmokedByClinton
Use a dedicated backup computer with 4 Seagate 120Gig hard drives in RAID 0+1. Should be about the same price, but your backups will be faster.

No.
For a business, you need to rotate your backups, and keep some of them (preferably the most recent) off-stie in case of fire, flood / burst pipe, theft.

Transferring 60 GB over even gigabit lan will take a while, so it might make sense to have the tape backup on the file server itself instead of a second machine. If load is an issue (jobs / people working late?) this could be the time to migrate the file server to a better machine, either dual processor or fast P4 with HT and plenty of RAM.

 

[CigarSmokedByClinton]

Originally posted by: DaveSimmons

Originally posted by: CigarSmokedByClinton
Use a dedicated backup computer with 4 Seagate 120Gig hard drives in RAID 0+1. Should be about the same price, but your backups will be faster.

No.
For a business, you need to rotate your backups, and keep some of them (preferably the most recent) off-stie in case of fire, flood / burst pipe, theft.

Transferring 60 GB over even gigabit lan will take a while, so it might make sense to have the tape backup on the file server itself instead of a second machine. If load is an issue (jobs / people working late?) this could be the time to migrate the file server to a better machine, either dual processor or fast P4 with HT and plenty of RAM.

Well it IS a backup solution, but not a good one if you want rotating backups, offsite storage, etc. The OP was not specific on his needs. I defer to n0c and Dave if you want to get fancy.

Cigar

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: CigarSmokedByClinton

Originally posted by: DaveSimmons

Originally posted by: CigarSmokedByClinton
Use a dedicated backup computer with 4 Seagate 120Gig hard drives in RAID 0+1. Should be about the same price, but your backups will be faster.

No.
For a business, you need to rotate your backups, and keep some of them (preferably the most recent) off-stie in case of fire, flood / burst pipe, theft.

Transferring 60 GB over even gigabit lan will take a while, so it might make sense to have the tape backup on the file server itself instead of a second machine. If load is an issue (jobs / people working late?) this could be the time to migrate the file server to a better machine, either dual processor or fast P4 with HT and plenty of RAM.

Well it IS a backup solution, but not a good one if you want rotating backups, offsite storage, etc. The OP was not specific on his needs. I defer to n0c and Dave if you want to get fancy.

Cigar

That's a file server. Tape backup is not something "fancy," it's basically a requirement. "Fancy" is making sure your off site backup is no less than 300 miles away. 😉

 

[ndee]

thanks for the responses so far!

n0cmonkey:
How long do you keep backups?
We want to be able to go back 1 week, we will also do monthly backups.

Do you have backups sent off site?
The guy that will exchange the backup tapes will take'em home or we deposit them in our safe.

Do you get all of your data during certain times, or is it a 24/7 operation? When do you plan to run backups?
Our working hours are from 0830-2100. So we could start the backup at 2130. The data doesn't change during 2100-0830.

Do you have a backup application in mind? Does it have a "live" client for your SQL server?
I was thinking about going with ArcServer BrightStor 11 and IIRC, it does have a SQL client. We have Veritas Backup Exec 8.6 at the moment and I hate it. I read some threads over at the Veritas forum. We had a problem and we were not the only one according to their forums but we never got an answer or a workaround. So I don't wanna use Backup Exec although it might be the Industry Standard.

I will search if there are any problems with that specific drive.

DaveSimmons:
That's actually a pretty good point you make. I might suggest such an upgrade to my boss cuz the current Fileserver is about 3 years old and it is getting kinda slow.

CigarSmokedByClinton:
Yeah, we also want rotating backups because it's for a company, not for a private user 🙂

Thanks guys!

 

[anthrax]

You also must be careful about the backup server. Most likely, with such a solution the Data will be moved from the file server ==> Network ===> Backup Server's DISK ===> SCSI ===>Ultrarim LTO tape drive==>LTO TAPE..... Ensure that there are now bottlenecks in that chain....

Assuming a LTO write rate of 30MB /sec you will need Gigabit Ethernet......Fast E can only do about 10MB/s..
Also beware of I/O bus contention....To do the above will require I/O thruput of at least 90MB/s....Data from LAN card to Disk controller, and Disk controller to the SCSI card. .....

As for ARC-Serve vs Netbackup Exec....I would say they are both are around the same......

Also, you will probably need open file backup support for the file server.. + sql plugin ... Netbackup Exec and ArcServe.

 

[CigarSmokedByClinton]

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey

Originally posted by: CigarSmokedByClinton

Originally posted by: DaveSimmons

Originally posted by: CigarSmokedByClinton
Use a dedicated backup computer with 4 Seagate 120Gig hard drives in RAID 0+1. Should be about the same price, but your backups will be faster.

No.
For a business, you need to rotate your backups, and keep some of them (preferably the most recent) off-stie in case of fire, flood / burst pipe, theft.

Transferring 60 GB over even gigabit lan will take a while, so it might make sense to have the tape backup on the file server itself instead of a second machine. If load is an issue (jobs / people working late?) this could be the time to migrate the file server to a better machine, either dual processor or fast P4 with HT and plenty of RAM.

Well it IS a backup solution, but not a good one if you want rotating backups, offsite storage, etc. The OP was not specific on his needs. I defer to n0c and Dave if you want to get fancy.

Cigar

That's a file server. Tape backup is not something "fancy," it's basically a requirement. "Fancy" is making sure your off site backup is no less than 300 miles away. 😉

HAHA Ok, I submit! Let me be!!!!

ahhh, what a funny place.

Cigar

 

[anthrax]

Originally posted by: CigarSmokedByClinton

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey

Originally posted by: CigarSmokedByClinton

Originally posted by: DaveSimmons

Originally posted by: CigarSmokedByClinton
Use a dedicated backup computer with 4 Seagate 120Gig hard drives in RAID 0+1. Should be about the same price, but your backups will be faster.

No.
For a business, you need to rotate your backups, and keep some of them (preferably the most recent) off-stie in case of fire, flood / burst pipe, theft.

Transferring 60 GB over even gigabit lan will take a while, so it might make sense to have the tape backup on the file server itself instead of a second machine. If load is an issue (jobs / people working late?) this could be the time to migrate the file server to a better machine, either dual processor or fast P4 with HT and plenty of RAM.

Well it IS a backup solution, but not a good one if you want rotating backups, offsite storage, etc. The OP was not specific on his needs. I defer to n0c and Dave if you want to get fancy.

Cigar

That's a file server. Tape backup is not something "fancy," it's basically a requirement. "Fancy" is making sure your off site backup is no less than 300 miles away. 😉

HAHA Ok, I submit! Let me be!!!!

ahhh, what a funny place.

Cigar

You can easily do that with a Tape backup w/ PTAM (pickup truck access method).......it has very high thru put tooo...........You can move 100TB(500 LTO tapes worth) in less than 5 hours... That is an AVERAGE transfer rate of 5.5GB per second.....or 44GB per second... 🙂
my...seek time of course would be slightly longer... 🙂

 

[ndee]

Originally posted by: anthrax
You also must be careful about the backup server. Most likely, with such a solution the Data will be moved from the file server ==> Network ===> Backup Server's DISK ===> SCSI ===>Ultrarim LTO tape drive==>LTO TAPE..... Ensure that there are now bottlenecks in that chain....

Assuming a LTO write rate of 30MB /sec you will need Gigabit Ethernet......Fast E can only do about 10MB/s..
Also beware of I/O bus contention....To do the above will require I/O thruput of at least 90MB/s....Data from LAN card to Disk controller, and Disk controller to the SCSI card. .....

As for ARC-Serve vs Netbackup Exec....I would say they are both are around the same......

Also, you will probably need open file backup support for the file server.. + sql plugin ... Netbackup Exec and ArcServe.

Yeah, that's what I thought too about the bottleneck so tomorrow, we will suggest a new File Server(Dell PowerEdge 2650, 1GB RAM, 2x2.4GHz Xeons, System HD: 18GB, 15'000rpm, Data HDs: 2x73GB SCSI RAID-1, PV110T 200GB Backup Tape Drive, Veritas Backup Exec Server Edition with SQL Server Add-on, 3 Year Silver on-Site Service with 4 hour response 24x7, PERC 3/Di embedded RAID controller and Windows 2003 Server). That will cost us about $10,500. With this solution, we could get rid of the Network Bottleneck.
I also looked into another solution with just an el-cheapo PC with a SCSI Card and the same Backup Tape Drive, costs us about $7000.
I think we can convince our Boss that a new File Server would be a good solution because the current one is kinda slow and it's a wonder that it's actually still running 🙂 We could then also upgrade to Active Directory while we're at it 🙂
You have to understand that our company started of really small and is now getting bigger and bigger so the need for REAL servers is here, currently, we have some home-made servers 😉

 

[anthrax]

Actually, thinking more about it , Ultrarim may be way too much of a overkill....A LTO 2 can do over a 100GB (30MB/s x 60 x 60 ) an hour.................
but think about it, with incremental (differetial) backup, only the things that change get backed up......does that data really change that much?

so calculate the total amount of data that changes in one day first........
how big is that SQL database? how much of it does it change in on day ?
how big is that file server ? how much of the data changes in one day ?
how big is the Telephony server? how much of its changes a day ?
Then you can accurately size the back up solution.....

Say the incremental backup size for each day is 20G....even a DAT 36/72 might do...

I would carefully think about the requirements.........Actually the key question here would be the size of the SQL database.....

 

[ndee]

Originally posted by: anthrax
Actually, thinking more about it , Ultrarim may be way too much of a overkill....A LTO 2 can do over a 100GB (30MB/s x 60 x 60 ) an hour.................
but think about it, with incremental (differetial) backup, only the things that change get backed up......does that data really change that much?

so calculate the total amount of data that changes in one day first........
how big is that SQL database? how much of it does it change in on day ?
how big is that file server ? how much of the data changes in one day ?
how big is the Telephony server? how much of its changes a day ?
Then you can accurately size the back up solution.....

Say the incremental backup size for each day is 20G....even a DAT 36/72 might do...

I would carefully think about the requirements.........Actually the key question here would be the size of the SQL database.....

My biggest problem with incremental backups is that you need all the other tapes to restore it. Incremental is after the first backup, always only the changes and differential ALL changes since the last full backup, right? So with an incremental backup, what do you do if a tape in between goes bad?
We have 2 SQL Databases, one is about 6GB and the other is about 3GB. We save all the transactions a day and that comes up to, dunno, about 1GB. The File Server has about 60GB and about 100MB in changes. The Telephony server changes about 200MB a day.
I'm not sure on how much we would want to go back -> how much tapes we will use but we want to be on the safe side cuz we're growing steadily(if that even is a word 😉). I also know that it is a little bit overkill but IF we get something now, we want something that will last sometime. If we would get a DAT 36/72 tape, I'm sure we would have to upgrade that pretty soon cuz I'm no fan of compression.
I might be a little bit stupid when it comes to backup but I like to backup EVERYTHING, EVERYDAY. I know there might be redundant data but it's the easiest way 😉

 

[Markfw]

full backups every day ? If you can afford the tapes, great. I would in that case go with a rotating 6 tapes for daily backups (use the weekly for the sunday), and 4 rotating tapes for weekly, and 12 rotating tapes for monthly backup. That may be overkill but thats what the big companies I have worked for do. There are some files (and/or databases) that we have had to restore from months back that mysteriously disappeared.

 

[ndee]

Originally posted by: Markfw900
full backups every day ? If you can afford the tapes, great. I would in that case go with a rotating 6 tapes for daily backups (use the weekly for the sunday), and 4 rotating tapes for weekly, and 12 rotating tapes for monthly backup. That may be overkill but thats what the big companies I have worked for do. There are some files (and/or databases) that we have had to restore from months back that mysteriously disappeared.

Yeah, I figured the tapes aren't too expensive anymore. But with the weekly tapes, you can only go back one whole week, not the days in between, I understood you correct, right?

 

[Markfw]

Yes, hence the need for the weekly backups. Those would only be used in a real emergency. Same with monthly.

 

[ndee]

Originally posted by: Markfw900
Yes, hence the need for the weekly backups. Those would only be used in a real emergency. Same with monthly.

ah ok. Thanks for the info 🙂

the problem is, I never worked in a really big company so I don't know what's the "norm" for a backup 🙂