I need help with an enterprise backup solution..

[skyking]

Wow, 60GB a day over the WAN would be a chunk!
Dirvish works between two linux servers using rsync to do the hard work. It will back up selected directories, incrementally.
It will only move the changed data, and make symlinks to data that was unchanged. This way the backup folder for a given date has all the data in it, without physically moving again over the WAN. I've used it more than a few times to get the exact version of a file from a specific date.
I was thinking the remote machine could make the backup tapes too.

 

[MrEgo]

So our sales rep keeps insisting that this is a short term solution and the LTO-4 tape backup wouldn't suit our company's needs. He repeatedly said "are you SURE this is what you want to go with?".

Just from having done my own research on this, it seems perfectly acceptable as an enterprise backup solution. It's pretty much an up-to-date method of what we're doing now.

I'm starting to wonder more and more if this guy just wants a much higher sales commission, even if he's feeding me total BS. Of course sales guys want commissions, but this guy has been pretty reliable in the past to not sacrifice his integrity for more money.

I'm also thinking drebo is right in the assumption that he may be new, inexperienced, ignorant, etc. Unless I'm missing something?

 

[drebo]

This is the guy that recommended four consumer-grade NAS boxes as an enterprise-grade backup solution?

He works at CDW?

Enough said. He's a salesman, not a technician. He's looking to sell you whatever gets him the best commission. I work as a consultant to many, many small and medium sized businesses and see this every single day.

Disk-based backups have their place, but they are NOT an enterprise-grade backup solution. We use disk-based backups to backup dental office networks, because they only run one application. Anyone larger than that, though, and we always recommend an LTO tape solution. We have some that went out and bought other solutions, such as AIT or various other disk-based solutions, because they were cheaper, and we always end up having to go in and fix it.

For what you want, tape is the way to go, and that Tandberg LTO4 autoloader fits the bill perfectly.

 

[MrEgo]

I guess I'm still unclear as to what it is about tape that makes it such a good enterprise solution as opposed to disk?

From a durability standpoint, it seems like tapes would be able to take more of a beating than hot-swappable disk drives would.. since the media will constantly have to be moved around, possibly dropped, banged around with other media, etc.

From a recovery standpoint, it sounds like disk has a significant advantage over tape in respect to the time it would take to recover the data.

But.. it just seems like disk drives would be much more reliable in recording your data without errors. Magnetic tape just seems so error prone... it's frickin magnetic tape Of course, I have no evidence whatsoever to back up that claim, that's just going off of pure gut instinct - which is probably wrong.

drebo, I'm not saying you're wrong.. in fact, I'm pretty excited to put this new backup solution in production. Through all of my research, I haven't seem to have found the smoking-gun answer as to why enterprise backups should consider LTO-4 over disk, assuming the budget is limited.

My boss also having a hard time comprehending how tapes can still be a better enterprise backup solution than disk is in this day and age, and I haven't been able to give him a concrete answer yet.

By the way, you've been a great help, man. I really appreciate it.

 

[RebateMonger]

Consider this entertaining link that includes discussion of tape backups.

 

[drebo]

Originally posted by: RebateMonger
Consider this entertaining link that includes discussion of tape backups.

A bunch of fud.

MrEgo, you're free to do what you will, and I've made my recommendation.

Tapes have a MUCH lower TCO, despite a slightly higher TCA, and your ROI is far, far greater. Storage density is higher. Speed is greater. Reliability (regardless of what fud-peddlers like RebateMonger will have you believe) is greater.

If paired with a proper backup software suite, tapes work exceedingly well. I can count the number of failed restores on one hand, and most of my customers do not adhere to proper storage conventions for their tapes. Catalogs and various other techniques make file recovery fast and simple.

But, like I said: I've made my recommendation, and experience has treated me well in this regard. Disk backups are not any more reliable than tapes, nor are they any as secure, cheap, or fast.

 

[MrEgo]

Is it common to have an on-site mirrored image of your servers to a disk(s), while backing up that mirrored image to tape for long-term, off-site storage? Or something along that line?

I feel pretty good about the Tandberg autoloader. I think we're going to go with that.

 

[RebateMonger]

Originally posted by: drebo
Tapes have a MUCH lower TCO, despite a slightly higher TCA, and your ROI is far, far greater. Storage density is higher. Speed is greater. Reliability (regardless of what fud-peddlers like RebateMonger will have you believe) is greater.

I couldn't care less what people use, as long as they make automated backups, store backups offsite, and test the quality of the backups on a regular basis.

The OP already stated that their tape drive solution wasn't capable of handling their needs. This is going to be an ongoing problem with tape.

As far as reliability, I find that 50% of the tape drive systems I encounter are non-functional. Replacing a failed hard drive (and they WILL fail) is cheap and simple. Diagnosing a malfunctioning tape drive is a PITA and very pricey. And, while the tape drive is in the repair shop, you have NO backups at all. If system recovery time is important, you should keep a second tape drive offsite.

If a major disaster strikes, you can plug a SATA backup drive into a desktop PC and, assuming you used dissimilar-hardware-capable backup software, you can restore your server into a Virtual Server. Try that with a pile of LTO tapes and no tape drive.

 

[drebo]

Originally posted by: MrEgo
Is it common to have an on-site mirrored image of your servers to a disk(s), while backing up that mirrored image to tape for long-term, off-site storage? Or something along that line?

I feel pretty good about the Tandberg autoloader. I think we're going to go with that.

MrEgo, a common practice that's similar to what you describe is included in BackupEXEC. It's called "Continuous Protection Server". Basically, it's a separate (usually dedicated) server that stores an image of every file and piece of data you have. You install an agent on the servers you wish to back up, and any time a block-level change happens on that server, that file is archived to the BackupEXEC CPS server.

CPS also provides version archiving, and a web-based interface that can be used by end-users and IT staff alike to go in and download old/deleted versions of any file. It's really a cool product, but isn't cheap to implement.

From this server, you can then take your daily backup image to tape.

 

[skyking]

Dirvish works that way. You can browse the backups by date and time. I've gone back a few times for users, rescuing a whole folder of docs and getting particular versions of a doc for them.

 

[MerlinRML]

Originally posted by: MrEgo
Is it common to have an on-site mirrored image of your servers to a disk(s), while backing up that mirrored image to tape for long-term, off-site storage? Or something along that line?

I feel pretty good about the Tandberg autoloader. I think we're going to go with that.

It is quite common to see a combination of disks and tape for backup solutions. If you look at the high end enterprise backup solutions, you will see things like disk-staging, synthetic backups, continuous data protection on the software side, and virtual tape libraries and nearline storage for hardware that allow you to use disks in conjunction with your tapes.

The real question you need to be asking yourself is whether or not the solution you choose will allow you to recover quickly enough in the event of disaster X. I tend to like having all recent backups (depending on the backup schedule, this can range from the last week to the last month) on nearline RAID storage and/or replicated to a remote site, and anything older on tape/optical offsite. Other factors like the sensitivity of the data, the rate of data change, and the impact of the change can all be considered when choosing your offsite schedule.

Your tandberg looks decent (though I've never used tandberg) for the tape side, but it may not be a complete DR solution depending on your needs.

 

[Bashbelly]

I just implemented a brand new EB solution at my workplace. We were in the same boat as you, we had been using a overland lto-2 dual drive tape library to try to backup 2.5TB of data a day. Ripped out everything including the crappy software solution we were using. Put in Commvault Galaxy Backup and a Data Domain DD565 (4.5TB) data deduplication appliance , integrating the old tape library as secondary backup for offsite usage. Works like a champ, daily incrementals are around 4GB and full's weekly and monthly.

forgot to mention that data dedup works incredible, have 44TB of data only using around 2.4TB .

 

[MrEgo]

I looked at some of those Data Domain DD565 devices.. and.. holy crap, how much money did you guys end up spending on that?

Merlin, is this something that you're referring to that would be a good in-between device:
Overland Storage REO 1500 Disk-Based Backup with Virtual Tape Library (VTL)

 

[MerlinRML]

That looks right, although I've only used larger VTLs. While I was not very fond of the idea of VTLs at first, the ease in which you can drop them into your current backup environment with very little software change won me over. Plus, you get some of the benefits of disk (speed and reliability).

You basically setup the VTL to match your real tape robot and assign the virtual media the same barcodes/labels as your real media. The VTL presents itself as a tape robot to your backup software and your software writes the data to the VTL as if it were a tape. The VTL usually writes to some logical container on the disk. For example, with a 400GB LTO tape, you would get 400GB logical container (I've seen virtual tape files, folders, etc) that line up pretty well with your real media. As your virtual media pieces get full, the virtual media can be replicated or completely moved to real tapes. The nice thing is that the replication is usually handled by the VTL, so your backups can be finished long before the tapes are ready.

Depending on how the VTL is configured and how you're using the available capacity, the virtual media can stay on the VTL for quick restores while you send the real tape copies offsite, or you can delete it to make room for additional backups. Ideally, you would have the last few backups on the VTL for quick restores, a real tape copy onsite and a real tape copy or two offsite.

The only thing that sends warning signs from the unit you linked (from the quick glance I gave the specs) is that it doesn't have any means for expanding capacity without replacing the unit. But if you want a VTL with external disk arrays, you're usually looking at a much higher price tag. One of the nice things is that it looks like you can use the disks separately from the VTL too, so you can transition it to a disk-based backup if you decide to go completely disk-based. Maybe someone else can chime in with thoughts on this particular model.