Looking for a good backup solution

[OUCaptain]

I need to get a backup solution for a customer. One coworker is pushing to just use USB external drives. My problem there is server 2008 doesn't play nice with those drives to perform a full OS and Data backup (or so I've heard).

The servers I'm building have HP's hot swap sas drives. I was thinking about just getting a few extra sas drives. Then she would just swap the drives each day and take one home. Problem there is I don't think I want her carrying the bare drive around in her purse. Are HP's hot swap drives protected at all when they are not installed. I was thinking about just getting her some kind of foam lined case to take the drives home with.

Any thoughts? Whats the popular backup method these days when you need to take a copy off site?

BTW: Here's the server I'm building

 

[RebateMonger]

Windows Server Backup, built into Windows Server 2008, LOVES USB drives, but USB may not be your best choice.

How much data in on your server?

 

[OUCaptain]

300 on one, 600 on the other. Idea is to have one drive off-site and one on-site performing the backup over night.

 

[ColKurtz]

Is this for archiving or just a single backup set you'll rotate out? For archiving -- multiple incremental backups -- there really is no substitute for tape. If you just want one or two sets of *current* backups in case of a fire or something, I agree HDDs are your best bet. Keep the OS partition small and keep a few disk images (Ghost, Acronis, etc) on DVD of it so you don't have to pull an OS drive each night.

You should be able to host your data and backup drives in the remaining 6 slots, even if you have to go 300GB on the backup drives.

I agree you should definitely get a solid carrying case made for the drives, with foam cutouts and such. Hard disks are a fragile backup solution.

 

[RebateMonger]

A couple of points:

As the OP probably knows, the built-in Windows Server Backup program in Server 2008 won't write to tapes. If you want to use tape, you'll need to buy a third-party backup program.

The built-in WBS program actually handles backups/restores pretty well. It makes an image backup that can restore to a brand-new hard drive in a single pass. I just performed a full restore yesterday, and it DID work.

I haven't timed the transfer speed yet. I don't know if WBS will back up faster to a SATA drive than a USB drive. The older NTBackup program in Server 2003 was limited to less than 10 MegaBytes per second transfers, so it made no difference what kind of drive you used. USB is limited to about 25MB/sec. transfer speed, while SATA drives are around 75MB/sec.

My normal recommendation for business is to purchase a MINIMUM of three backup drives. One is left hooked up, while the other two are normally off-site. They are swapped as required. That way, if a drive fails, you still have the ability to swap drives while you wait for a replacement. Also, as always, the more generations of backups you have, the better.

I also recommend the purchase of at least one additional drive each year as an "Archival" with aat least one archvial backup of the server that is updated as appropriate.

You'll defintely want some sort of transport case. I used padded cases from http://granitedigital.com . I also use their internal SATA hot-swap trays and housings housings, which have fan and temperature monitors and alarms. But they require a 5.25" drive bay. Granite Digital also sells external SATA hot-swap housings that use the same trays. I haven't used those yet.

If you don't want to use USB, you can use eSATA or SATA, attached to a hot-swap-capable SATA controller. Note that SATA RAID controllers are normally NOT hot-swap compatible. I tend to NOT suggest pulling drives from your server's backplane, even if it is hot-swap. If the internals get damaged from daily swaps, you'll have a much bigger problem that with a cheap hot-swap-capable SATA controller and inexpensive SATA drives.

If it was me, I'd start with three or four USB or SATA 1 TB drives. As the 1.5 TB drives get more reliable, you can switch and use the "old" 1 TB drives for archival backups.

Note, though, that WSB will NOT make "scheduled" backups to a networked drive. It'll only make automatic scheduled backups to a local drive. Don't ask me why....WSB also specially formats the local backup drives. So you'll probably need a second housing and more drives if you want to back up two servers with WSB.

 

[OUCaptain]

It's looking like HD with a good case is the way I'll go. I'm setting up three drives in each on a 5 array. I figure I'll just get 2 slower larger capacity drives for each server. The MAS server will be 3 300GB drives. So a 600GB will allow an absolute full back up. Same thing with domain but only 300 GB total. The customer likes only two back up drives. Just one in and one out so it's simple for her to know what drive is what.

BTW.. didn't know 2008 didn't write to tapes. Good to know though. My main hatred of tapes comes from having to replace the drive bands every year or two and tapes wearing out. The drives may have changed in the last few years but that is the stem of my hatred. This customer is also a few hours out in the boonies. I don't want any reason to have to drive out there post install.