Need Suggestions for Automated Backup

[Alma J Wetzker]

Chong Yu Meng wrote:
> I know of a video-editing company in Brunei that uses RAID-5. I'm not 
> too concerned about speed because my feeling is that the network will be 
> the bottleneck. In any case, RAID-5 will require me to purchase 3 hard 
> disks and I'd still need a backup system. I think I'll go for the 
> mirrored hard disks first, maybe move to RAID-5 when I have the budget, 
> but I'd get a backup tape drive first before moving to RAID-5.
> 
> I had some really hairy experiences with tape backups years ago -- can't 
> restore backups, can't successfully backup database files, etc. But very 
> recently, when I was using a Sun backup drive (I think it's actually a 
> Quantum), it actually worked very well. Backup speeds were pretty 
> impressive (1 GB in 15 minutes), and the backups actually worked -- i.e. 
> they could be restored. So, I'm ok with tape.
> 
> I guess my problem can be solved procedurally : start small, slowly 
> build up capability as volume ramps up (and the tall dollars roll in -- 
> hopefully!).
> 
> I miss the dot-com days when I had a huge budget and could build a whole 
> server farm !

Something just came back to me.  We kept our tapes in the data center inside a 
fireproof safe (about $80.00 USD) because when we left them out they would 
fail pretty consistently.  Treat them well with as stable an environment as 
you can manage and they will be there for you when you need it.

     -- Alma