Server Backup Question - RAID vs Tape

[MultiPle3]

First of all, this is the first time I've ever set up a server. What I need is a file storage server for a small business, but they may expand into an Exchange server and some other additions later. Obviously I'm going to need a backup system, but I would like to keep it as simple as possible. Once I get this setup there will be no dedicated IT staff.

My proposed solution is to have the server consist of three hard drives (A, B, and C for starters) in a RAID 1 configuration. Then at the end of each week, someone comes in and takes out one drive (drive A the first week) to store offsite, and puts in another drive (drive D). The server should then rebuild drive D from the contents of drives B and C. The next week, they take out drive B and put drive A back in.

Drive rotation:

Week 1: A, B, C in server - D offsite

Week 2: D, B, C in server - A offsite

Week 3: D, A, C in server - B offsite

Week 4: D, A, B in server - C offsite

Week 5: C, A, B in server - D offsite

...and so on...

Should anything go wrong with a drive, we just replace it. If the server were to crash or become corrupted, we can format/replace any drives that were in it at the time and rebuild them from the drive that was offsite.

This may put a bit of extra stress on each drive, but we should have plenty of redundancy. Also, this should still be cheaper than buying a tape drive, buying tapes, buying BackupExec, and paying me to set it up.

My problem is just that I haven't really heard of this being done and wanted to know if there was a major flaw in my plan. Thanks in advance for your responses.

[Kosh]

Well this is definately NOT what RAID should be used for.

Also consider the following:

When you put in your blank "D" Drive into the RAID 5, the RAID will be degraded until everything is back in sync.

Depending on the amount of data which resides on the logical volume, it will be at least hours until your RAID is up and running again.

If something happens to another drive, when the RAID Status is degraded: Good Bye Data!

TapeDrives are not sooo expensive, and most of them come with a simple backup software which should fit your needs.

A good Tapebackup can not be replaced by a RAID-Set.

EDIT: I misread RAID 1 with RAID 5.

With RAID 1, your data will be mirrored from disk A to B, and from B to C.

Look here: http://www.raid.com/04_01_01.html

I don't think its even possible to use an odd amount of disks with RAID 1

[EJ72]

As I'm sure you will hear plenty of times, RAID IS NOT BACKUP.

Get a quality tape drive whose capacity meets your data storage needs, set up a schedule (nightly incremental, weekly full, etc) and sleep better at night.

[sc302 Veteran]

RAID is not a backup. RAID is a backup to a failed hard drive. It is assurance that your server/pc will keep running even though there is a drive failed. When a drive normally fails the system stops functioning completely, with RAID the system will keep going if a drive fails. With RAID1 if the primary system drive fails you can easily switch the primary drive with the secondary drive and keep it going, but again it is not a backup. All a RAID is going to do is protect you from a hard drive failure, it does not and will not suffice as a backup to your system, it will not protect you from any other type of hardware failure, nor will it protect you from accidental deletions. It was designed to be a hard drive failure backup system, not a system backup solution.

FYI, a UPS is a backup solution too, it is a backup solution for power (now do you really think that a UPS is a backup solution that is going to backup your data?) There are multiple "backup" solutions that go into a server, from power to hardware, and each "backup" solution was designed for a specific task, but there is only one type of data backup solution, and that is a data backup solution (not raid, not ups, not san, not nas, not tape, not any thing else). With that being said, you have backup to tape, backup to nas, backup to san, backup to hard drive, backup to whatever. When you backup to something that is a data backup, when you have a RAID that is a hardware backup, when you have a redundant power supply that is a backup to your internal power, when you have a ups that is a backup to your external power. I hope this makes sense.

You will need to offload the data to another medium (usb drive, tape, nas) to have a true backup. You want to be cheap get a hard drive backup solution (these are cheap but most likely to fail), get a NAS (a little more expensive but it is a bit harder to take off site), or a tape (more expensive yet, but you can drop a tape and not crash any heads and they are easy to take off site). I would also suggest getting a backup solution that has a good logging feature that will assist with backup issues, not just telling you that it failed.

Edited September 15, 2009 by sc302

[+BudMan MVC]

As already stated a few times "RAID IS NOT A BACKUP"

And also mentioned -- I don't believe you understand the raid levels and how they work

"three hard drives (A, B, and C for starters) in a RAID 1 configuration"

Never seen a raid controller that allows this.. Would it be possible to say mirror A and B, and then mirror this array to a C -- possible I guess, but again have never seen this.. Nor would it really make sense -- normally what you would see is A and B mirrored (raid1) and then C as a HOT SPARE -- so if A or B failed, it would auto move C into the array and rebuild the mirror, etc.

sc302 pretty much covered the bases of hardware ways to do.. And do like your 3 drive idea, but I would use the 3rd drive as a hot spare since you stated not going to be any IT on site. So your going to want to setup a alert that a drive has failed an the hot spare is in use -- so you can get the failed drive replaced in a timely manner.

Another option, especially If budget is a concern and no one to be able to change the tapes, etc. -- not sure if the online services support bare bones type recovery -- ie you lost the complete system -- all drives fail in the raid, since in theory you would need 3 drives to fail with mirrored drives and a hot spare - before you would have to restore the whole system. You would have to evaluate the risk of not having a bare bones recovery option (might be available with some online backup solutions?) - but all of them allow you to backup your DATA. You seem to clearly understand the need to have a backup that moves the "DATA" off site. Example case of the server gets stolen ;) Seen it happen!!

What if a fire? What if disgruntled employee destroys the data. What if a Tornado takes the building with it, etc. etc. etc.

Depending on the amount and sensitivity of the data and bandwidth at the location -- online backup might be another solution for you. This would be an offliine copy as well as offsite, etc. And would be very simple to setup with no hardware required, etc. And easy enough to setup notification of failure, etc. Some of these solutions start at $5 a month, etc.. depending on the amount of data you have.

Examples

http://www.amerivault.com/

http://mozy.com/pro/ <--- business version, very affordable for the soho

http://backup.ironmountain.com/

etc.. etc..

Edited September 15, 2009 by BudMan

[MultiPle3]

Wow, thanks for all the info. I'm glad I asked before just trying this.

I had thought that an odd number of drives was permissible in RAID 1 because most descriptions of RAID 1 that I've read say they require 2 or more hard drives. They didn't specify an even number, oops.

As far as the backup goes, I'll either use a tape backup or an online service. If I go with a tape backup, is Symantec's Backup Exec the best software to use? Or do any of the Windows Server OSes come with software that will get the job done?

Thanks again for your replies.

[sc302 Veteran]

I use backup exec a lot. Good logging, can send alerts via email, fax, printer, etc.to let you or someone know that the backup failed. Imo, it is the best out there. I have used yosemite tape backup, arc serve, acronis, and windows backup, and have found backup exec to be best for me (tons of support, good error logs, lots of options).

A more expensive solution would be an auto loader that holds 10 or more tapes. I support multiple sites and am there once a week I change the autoloaders when I get in and put the tapes in a vault. They have about 1 week of backup in the auto loader and 1 to 3 weeks in the vault (depending on the site). A few times I have had to restore a file, email, and/or sql database while remote because someone changed it or deleted it.

[majortom1981]

  sc302 said:

I use backup exec a lot. Good logging, can send alerts via email, fax, printer, etc.to let you or someone know that the backup failed. Imo, it is the best out there. I have used yosemite tape backup, arc serve, acronis, and windows backup, and have found backup exec to be best for me (tons of support, good error logs, lots of options).

A more expensive solution would be an auto loader that holds 10 or more tapes. I support multiple sites and am there once a week I change the autoloaders when I get in and put the tapes in a vault. They have about 1 week of backup in the auto loader and 1 to 3 weeks in the vault (depending on the site). A few times I have had to restore a file, email, and/or sql database while remote because someone changed it or deleted it.

Depending on how big the servers hdd is you can use an external hdd for backup . We use a couple of options. we have our windows 2008 servers doing image backups to an hdd via the windows 2008 image backup utility.

We also have our backup software (ultrabac) taking full server images to an external hdd also.

windows 2008 has a great full server image backup utility that is good but it doesnt support tape drives.

We use Ultrabac here and its just as good as the other backup utilites and it takes full server images (while the server is running) and has a windowspe based recovery cd to boot off of to restore the image.

[MultiPle3]

I'm probably going to use an external HDD to back up the data. We're looking at having between 200GB and 1000GB of data. This would be much more expensive with tape than an external HDD.

So I'll buy two external HDD's, one to have connected to the server, one to have off-site. The server will be configured to backup to the connected drive once a night. Then they can have someone swap the two drives as often as they would like (no less than once a week).

With no IT staff on hand, this solution should be much simpler for them to maintain.

[teriba]

1. Run 2 drives in a RAID-1 or 3 or 4 drives in a RAID-5.

2. Backup to an external hard drive.

3. Profit.

Tapes are retarded and online storage will be quite expensive and in a business environment restoring your data will take too long (downloading 1TB of data from a server).

[Joel]

  teriba said:

Tapes are retarded

Really? Why is that?

[+BudMan MVC]

"will take too long (downloading 1TB of data from a server). "

Who said you would download it over a wan connection? Clearly your completely out of date on how this stuff works..

http://www.amerivault.com/replication_serv...k_recovery.html

For large volumes -- they can bring a mobile vault on site for the first copy -- you then only are uploading changes to your data over wan connection. In case of disaster -- they can ship a mobile vault with your data on it to your site, etc. etc.

Do all online backups provide this type of service -- not sure, but if your a company that has LOTS of data - then clearly a feature like this is something you would need in the online backup company you choose.

But a soho with 1 server is unlikely to have TBs of data that needs backing up either. Also even if they did -- who cares if it takes say a week to get all your data back.. Even if they had 10TB of data -- its unlikely that you would need ALL 10 TB back before you could get back to work, etc. You grab the important stuff first, etc.

Also lots of online backup services provide a method for you to access the backup directly if need be to get fast access to your critical files in case of disaster, etc.

I somewhat agree that tape tech is becoming outdated -- but its still a very cost effective method of backup for LARGE amounts of data.. They are clearly not retarded ;)

[majortom1981]

  MultiPle3 said:

I'm probably going to use an external HDD to back up the data. We're looking at having between 200GB and 1000GB of data. This would be much more expensive with tape than an external HDD.

So I'll buy two external HDD's, one to have connected to the server, one to have off-site. The server will be configured to backup to the connected drive once a night. Then they can have someone swap the two drives as often as they would like (no less than once a week).

With no IT staff on hand, this solution should be much simpler for them to maintain.

Thats a great way. We do this now . If the servers are windows 2008 you wont need any bakup software either.

And in response to teriba tapes are not retarded. They are great for backups of smaller things and databases and stuff . We backup some things to tape because its harder to damage a tape . Great for a backup of a backup.