Backup Solutions

  • Alright,

    I need help from SSC members.

    I am currently drawing up the hardware specification for the company i work for to provide a TS version of the application we design/develop.

    Our solution will compromise of:

    1) SQL Server Box (4 x Quad Core procs, 8gb ram, 5 x 146gb Disks in RAID 5)

    2) TS Server (4 x Quad Core procs, 16gb ram, 3 x 146gb Disks in RAID 5)

    3) Authentication/Web Server (1 x Dual Core Proc, 2 gb ram, 2 x 73gb hdd (RAID 1)

    We are happy with the above, but we are looking to implement a backup system also. This would ideally be something removable so we can take backups of site. Im thinking tapes, but havent found any tape drives that can hook up to all three servers? We will need to backup roughly 500gb or data across the 3 servers daily (full backups every night, weekly and monthly).

    Any ideas? Or should i be looking at a small scale iSCSI SAN with a single tape backup?

    Please help!

    Thanks,

    Matt.

    P.S Sorry about the "Quality" of this post. I am in a bit of a rush at the moment! I will try and revise it later.

  • Most backup solutions only attach to one server and you send files from other servers to that one, or there is a backup agent that moves files.

    Arcserve, Veritsa, BMC, all large backup vendors make software for this. Unless you can afford a high bandwidth offsite link, go with tape.

    I'd set up a process to copy data from the SQL box (full, log backups) to one of the other boxes. Perhaps the same thing for the web box and then have tape software move those files to tape.

  • Ahh right okay - so that would mean in me tape "host" server, id need to have enough space to cover the other two servers also? Or do any of them packages do compression on the fly,so to speak?

    Tar,

    Matt.

  • It would need enough space, but you're not necessarily backing up the entire server. It doesn't really make sense to back up anything other than the database and log backups on SQL Server, so the OS, SQL OS, etc. don't need to be copied over.

    On the other server, I'd think you only back up the application/web files, maybe the registrry.

  • Nice one Steve, thanks.

    Matt.

  • i use Veritas and Evault

    Veritas we've had for 8 years. we run it on a unix server and have an old Quantum tape robot. we backup 20-30 sql servers and each one has a Veritas agent on it. goes straight to tape with the server controlling everything. we still have old DLT tapes that are 40GB/80GB uncompressed/compressed capacity.

    We also started to use Evault and over the next few years will move all the sql backups to it. similar to Veritas except it backs up to disk. uses SQL 2005 Express as it's db engine. you can set it up to have a primary backup volume(s) and then dump to a secondary volume. you can also set up another Evault system at another site and replicate all your backups there. not 100% perfect, but pretty good

    we are also looking for a new tape library for now. LTO-4 and it holds up to 1.6T of compressed data per tape

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