Need Suggestions for Automated Backup

[Chong Yu Meng]

Hmm... lots to think about.

Well, most of the stuff is just static HTML pages. Some data will be 
stored in configuration files and a local database (MySQL or Firebird -- 
haven't decided yet). From my tests with beta users, the volume isn't 
high (approximately 50MB of data daily, though applications, database, 
support software all take up about 300 MB -  500 MB, depending on the 
install options ), so CD-ROMs may be the way to go.

Of course, nobody wants long downtime and they want redundancy, but 
based on the budget I have been given --which is really small-- I think 
that initially, I can probably get by on weekly backups and mirroring 
alone. Speed isn't an issue because the bottleneck will probably be the 
network, and the volume is expected to be small (famous last words, I 
know! But if it ramps up, then it wouldn't be an altogether bad thing). 
If the server goes down, I'll really be up the creek, because it takes 
about 3 hours to get permission to access the data center (new security 
rules), and only if I can get signoff from all the people involved.

Thanks and Regards,
pascal chong


Alma J Wetzker wrote:

>
>
> Chong Yu Meng wrote:
>
>> Hmm... I never thought about the size thing. Didn't factor it in.
>>
>> I'm not sure about RAID, though -- I'll have to do the sums to see if 
>> I can build in some redundancy. Which would you suggest ? Mirroring 
>> or a full RAID-5 array ? I'm thinking now of maybe dumping everything 
>> into an external hard drive since it's actually cheaper (and faster) 
>> than tape. But I won't be able to keep many "snapshots" of the data, 
>> I imagine. Typically, how many days data does a company keep?
>>
>> Thanks and Regards,
>> pascal chong
>
>  [snip]
>
> When my paycheck (and a LOT of others) depended on things like this, 
> We made full backups every weekend, month, quarter and year.  We kept 
> the full backups off-site with a company that provided that service.  
> We did incremental backups daily and kept those in a fireproof safe in 
> the data center.  We also did full backups before and after 
> inventories for auditing purposes.  I imagine how much you keep will 
> depend on your accounting cycle and how much you want to spend.
>
> Mirroring with RAID (10) is expensive but fast read and write.  If 
> that is what you are thninking, you fracture the mirror, replace a 
> drive and reenable the mirror.  Be prepared for a system stall as the 
> drive is copied.  RAID (5) is about as fast on reads but the writes 
> are much slower.  It requires fewer drives but full backups need to be 
> done on a separate media (another drive, tape, CD, etc.)  Great for 
> data warehouse applications or web sites that don't collect data on 
> the same drives.
>
> For just backup, I would recomend an external drive.  The criticality 
> of the data should drive when you go to RAID.  (How long can the 
> company survive without access to the data on the system?  How long to 
> replace the whole server?  Can the data be corrupted, or just lost?  
> That type stuff should drive your level of backup.)  FWIW
>
>     -- Alma
>
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