Interim Backup Solution

Discussion in 'Software' started by Fergal1982, Mar 17, 2008.

  1. Fergal1982

    Fergal1982 Petabyte Poster

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    Today, disaster hit. Came in this morning to find that the live server for my webportal had crashed. Looks like a PSU issue, so its knackered.

    In the interim, we pulled the files off the HDD, and lumped them onto another server (phew).

    However, it highlighted an important issue. Because our system managers contractor timesheets, it can be expected to be updated over the weekend. Currently we have DAT tapes that are used to back up the server Mon-Fri. No backup is actually performed over the weekend (since we'd need someone to come in and replace the tapes).

    I need a backup solution that will back up the database files, and the application folders to another location on a sat/sun without affecting the running of the portal, and without needing someone to physically replace the tapes.

    I was thinking about just using a script, or the backup routine, to copy the files to another server, or an external HDD. Anyone got any other suggestions.
     
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  2. hbroomhall

    hbroomhall Petabyte Poster Gold Member

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    Why not mark the Friday tape as "Friday + weekend" and just do an incremental on Sat and Sun?

    Unless Friday's backup takes the whole tape of course.....

    Harry.
     
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  3. Fergal1982

    Fergal1982 Petabyte Poster

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    I dont think we can do that can we? The backup tapes are automatically ejected at the end of the backup routine.
     
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  4. hbroomhall

    hbroomhall Petabyte Poster Gold Member

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    So change the parameter to not do that on Friday?

    In the unix world it is either a switch param, or a sub_number on the device.

    Harry.
     
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  5. Fergal1982

    Fergal1982 Petabyte Poster

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    fair enough. I dont really deal with the backup software in general normally, but i can look into that.

    Assuming the full tape is used, what other options have I got?
     
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  6. hbroomhall

    hbroomhall Petabyte Poster Gold Member

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    Well - the first point is that if you are currently running that close to a full tape what are your plans for when the backup set gets larger? <grin> You shouldn't be running that close to the edge.

    What are the sizes here? i.e. how big are the tapes, how big the normal backup set, how big would an incremental of just the timesheets path be?

    And are you doing a full backup every day? Might an incremental or a differential with weekly full sets be more usefull?

    Harry.
     
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  7. Fergal1982

    Fergal1982 Petabyte Poster

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    Apparently we're doing a full backup every day, but its not taking up the full space.

    The avenue it looks like we're going to pursue is performing a backup to file on sat/sun, and piping it down to our office.

    We're also going to consider clustering on the server, in order to provide a failover mechanism if the server dies.

    Hopefully, the combination should give us plenty of redundancy.
     
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  8. nugget
    Honorary Member

    nugget Junior toady

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    How about using ntbackup to do a scheduled backup to another nework share?
     
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  9. ThomasMc

    ThomasMc Gigabyte Poster

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    I never uses them but what about a disc 2 disc(Virtual tape) backup if your software supports it
     
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