Small business tape drives? Backup schemes?

[John Prophet]

What are the decent tape drive solutions out there? What do you guys see being used in small businesses?

Do any of you use travan for small amounts of data?

Do most companies use compression?

If any of you service workgroup type networks, what do they do for backup? Anything?? lol.

Do you have any cool backup schemes to share?

JP

[SpookyEddy]

I use mostly Sony AIT solutions including a standard model that can hold 50GB uncompressed and a 4 tape autoloader (200GB before compression). Compared to the HP DLT I have they are a pleasure to work with as the tapes are less than a quarter of the size, the performace is as good or better and they never need cleaning. However they may be a bit expensive for a small office etc (best part of £1000 for the standard drive).

For software I use BackupExec 9 with a few extras like Exchange and SQL support.

Regards

ed

[Tazman]

I just built a server for a dental practice that had a lousy 2GB tape backup that took so long that the office personnel weren't performing the backups.

I set the system up as follows:

3 30GB drives. Two are set as RAID 0+1, the third as a backup drive. I put in a 48x CDRW also.

I wrote a simple batch file and set scheduled tasks to run it each day a half hour before the office closes. The batch file copies / overwrites the entire contents of the RAID setup - c: to the third drive - d:. Another batch file on the desktop backs up the database to the CDRW daily.

I know, extremely redundant but after spending over a week rebuilding that database, I wanted a setup that would allow me to get back up and running as quickly as possible. I also didn't want to have to rely on human interface because of reliability issues .

Mike

[John Prophet]

Quote:

Originally posted by Tazman
I also didn't want to have to rely on human interface because of reliability issues .

Mike

yep, that is pretty much going to always be the number 1 thing....we all take comps for granted but its amazing how many millions of office workers in USA dont have a clue yet and they get all confused and forgetfull about backups...or just lazy. Comps arent quite commodities yet...at least not like a tv where MOST peeps canjust use em no prob.

I did some work for an office and they had some kind of funky backup deal with an external usb drive and retrospect backup...well for some reason it would crap out...so I reset it all and it crapped out again a few days later...they never called me back and I know no one else has looked at it..when I was there working on something else I asked her about it and she gave some kind of vague answer about it..so Im not sure what kind of backup they do now.....for the quicken files of a decent sized real estate company.

But the average office worker usually doesnt really know how to go thru a "tree" and choose what files to backup..they choose "backup entire computer" lol. And yeah, if it takes more than a few minutes, they eventually balk and let it slide altogether.

One of the keys to succeed in most businesses in America is, unfortunately..you have to realize the totally lazy nature of Americans..so you have to make things super easy for them...like for a baby. If they have to think...its too hard.

JP

[John Prophet]

Mike, just out of curiousity, for my apprenticeship, lol..when you say you built them a "server"..what exactly does the server do? Is it just mainly for backup? Or does it serve an app? How many comps do they have and what is the setup? Is it just sharing on a workgroup?

Thanks, JP

[meese]

John,

Are you more concerned with data or restoring the system or both?

Here is a MS KB article on backing up the system state in W2K:

http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;en-us;240363

I have a small business and use batch files ( Like Mike) to backup company data from all the clients to my servers and also to my home server via VPN. I'm in a Domain environment so I am also concerned about backing up the system state of each DC. The article above explains this. But with any domain having at leat 2 DC's is a must unless you want to rebuild your entire domain from scratch if your only DC were to fail.

[Tazman]

Quote:

One of the keys to succeed in most businesses in America is, unfortunately..you have to realize the totally lazy nature of Americans..so you have to make things super easy for them...like for a baby. If they have to think...its too hard.

Well said .

Yeah, it acts as a file server for the dental database. I picked up the account some 2 years ago when the software company decided to charge $5000 per year for phone technical support and $100 per hour for onsite support. They charged him $50,000 to install 3 500MHz cerleries, network them and install the software .

The actual "server" is the office manager's computer. There are now 4 other work stations attached to it that use the database for all of the practices patient (5000+ patients) info, appointments, etc.

When we had that power failure awhile back, the UPS failed and the last good backup was done two weeks before. That means that any appiontments, patient info, billing, etc was toast .

I now have the network setup with each computer assigned a static ip addie on a workgroup. The only directory shared is the database directory on the server. There are also two network printers hooked up all running through a switch.

For security reasons, there isn't any internet connection into the office and only a modem used for filing claims.

It's a pretty basic small network setup.

Here's a couple of pics of the server.

Mike

[Tazman]

The wiring job...

[John Prophet]

Meese....definitely more worried about saving/rescuing/restoring data..such as, say...quickbooks financial info, peachtree info, or even the data as Tazman was referring to. As far as restoring comps, at this point, to me, thats just a rebuild...I think the level of customer I work for right now, they wouldnt NEED the comp to be back online in an hour...they just want to not lose months of data.

This prog looks as if it has some promise http://www.techsoftpl.com/backup/


Taz... "The batch file copies / overwrites the entire contents of the RAID setup - c: to the third drive - d:. Another batch file on the desktop backs up the database to the CDRW daily."

How big is the database? I assume that you did a full backup to cdrw and now the batch file tells it just to backup THAT DAYS worth of data? So is that incremental or differential? lol. I am just trying to figure out how much data is being written to the cdrw daily...i:e: how often do they have to change the cd etc.

So is that setup like with NEro InCD or Roxio DirectCD packet writing where you format the cd first??



Sorry to be a pest guys, but I need to learn this stuff cold, lol. Before too long my name will be in the newspapers in ads saying I will come to peoples businesses and do this stuff!!! lol. (have to start somewhere) SO I want to have a few practical backup schemes in my head to be able to have something to offer....its mostly going to be small workgroup stuff at first...nothing on the level of domains etc, even though I am studying for mcse also.
JP

[MDS]

Everything on our network backs-up to the server and each computer also backs up to a 20gig travan. The Seagate tape drives were in place before I started working before adding the backup server as they only had one tape per computer and had bad backups overwrited on the tapes. Now accounting has 10 tapes which backup nightly and therefore they have 10 days of backups without overwriting as they deal with government agencies and can not afford to lose the data. Also all clients back up weekly to the server and each system has 2 backups so they only overwrite backups 2 weeks old and there will still be recent back in case.