Backups With External Hard Drives

[sugarboy]

Hi, I have a W2K3 server that's using older tape backup tech that's very slow. Can I just buy a few 500 GB external drives to use for backup instead of the tapes? I'm using Backup Exec - is there anything I should consider?

 

[CalvinHobbes]

That should work just fine. You might want to consider something like an external SATA RAID array.

 

[Scarpozzi]

NT Backup works great too and it comes free with Windows. You can schedule it to do incrementals as well as full backups. I would only use Backup Exec if you're going to a central backup server with a tape library unless you just want the added support....but that's just because I hate overkill and try to keep things simple.

I agree. You'll probably want to see about setting up a RAID array for some added redundancy. Since it's backups, RAID 5 should be sufficient in both I/Os and GB/$$. It's just a matter of whether or not you have an enclosure and RAID controller...or the money to buy one.

Another option of course, is to buy a cheap NAS appliance and kill more birds with one stone. There are also linux distros like freenas available that give you a cheap solution that you can map drives to. Just get a P4 Server with a gig of RAM, RAID controller, Gig NICs, and add as many disks as it will support.

http://www.freenas.org/

 

[sugarboy]

Well, I don't think I really need an enclosure with RAID 5 if the server already is RAID 5, do I? The data is usually between 1-1.5 TB and I want to take the backups off-site. I figure 2 x 750 GB or 3 x 500 GB drives would do. I already own Backup Exec, so I don't see any need to switch although I never seriously considered using Backup NT.

I will keep these suggestions in mind... maybe I will need it to scale for the future. FreeNAS mentions it's alpha/beta, although it seems like a good solution too.