If the USBD drive is just a typical harddrive inside of a USB enclosure then your rish of drive failure is about the same as the risk of loosing a harddrive. The increase in likelyhood is that typical harddrives are not meant to be transported around and that may increase the failure rate if the drives have not been designed for travel. You are also giving yourself a single point of failure because if you loose a drive and it is just a single drive (no RAID) then you have lost all the data on that drive.
The same holds true to some extent for a tape: if the tape gets damaged then you lost the data on the tape. Where tape is better in this regard is that you have probably got multiple tapes with that data on it if you have architected your backup strategy properly and may even still have that data on the disk-based backup as well. Since you will be keeping weekly and monthly backups at a minimum you have given yourself a bit of redundancy in the event that one of your tapes is lost/damaged. Phil -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Dan DeStefano Sent: Monday, October 25, 2004 1:53 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: [ActiveDir] Backup Strategy Thank you for your suggestions. What about the USB drives? Am I right to be concerned about their reliability. Would these concerns be mitigated by using an offsiting service such as Iron Mountain (which is also being considered)? I forgot to mention that we are using Backup Exec 9. _________________________ Daniel DeStefano PC Support Specialist IAG Research 345 Park Avenue South, 12th Floor New York, NY 10010 T. 212.871.5262 F. 212.871.5300 www.iagr.net <http://www.iagr.net> Measuring Ad Effectiveness on Television The information contained in this communication is confidential, may be privileged and is intended for the exclusive use of the above named addressee(s). If you are not the intended recipient(s), you are expressly prohibited from copying, distributing, disseminating, or in any other way using any of the information contained within this communication. If you have received this communication in error, please contact the sender by telephone 212.871.5262 or by response via e-mail. -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Renouf, Phil Sent: Monday, October 25, 2004 12:45 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: [ActiveDir] Backup Strategy This is becoming a pretty common scenario for companies who have a shrinking backup window but still require the same or higher level of uptime. Backing up to disk then running your tape backup on that disk based backup is a great way to keep your backup window small and still provide offsite storage of backup media and quicker restores from your disk based backup. When you architect the backup environment I would try and provide for a backup network that is separate from your production LAN so that when you are running those tape backups during the day you don't impact the production network with that traffic. A SAN would also limit the network traffic and unless your environment is very large would probably negate the need for the backup network. I think you are referring to LTO when you say lso. Phil -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Rodriguez, Daniel [EPM/SRM] Sent: Monday, October 25, 2004 12:29 PM To: '[EMAIL PROTECTED]' Subject: RE: [ActiveDir] Backup Strategy I am kinda in the same boat as you. I have talked to my management and they seem please with the recommendations that I have shown them. Now what I have: I have two DLT-IV Tape Libraries that are backing up a combined total of 200Gb a night. I am looking at the Compaq Itanium Disk Array with LSO Tape Backup. I am using Backup Exec 9.1 and will utilize their Disk-to-Disk Backup at night, and then during the day, backup to LSO Tape so I can monitor it. Also, the disk array will allow me to move the data off some of our servers for disaster recovery. The money that you invest in you scenario, you can purchase a good tape library, disk array. IMHO. Daniel E. Rodriguez Information Technology Emerson Process Management Fisher Controls Division Sherman, Texas (903)868-3357 [EMAIL PROTECTED] -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Dan DeStefano Sent: Monday, October 25, 2004 10:52 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [ActiveDir] Backup Strategy I am sorry if this is off-topic, but I greatly respect the opinions/suggestions that come from this list. I am working on a backup strategy for my company. We have just over 300GB of data to back up. I have been asked to estimate storage capacity/cost required to keep data for 1 month and 3 months, so this means that we will need between 1 and 3 TB of storage. The current backups are stored on a SCSI array and the plan is to use USB drives for offsiting our data. This means that we will need 4-12 300GB USB drives to store our offsite data. I personally do not like this solution and am in favor of a disk/tape solution; using a disk array for onsite backups and using tape for offsite backups. The company prefers disk-based backup because of its speed. However, I think that disks are less reliable than tape and that using USB drives is not an enterprise-class solution (I have also heard that those 300GB USB drives are not too reliable). Not to mention the fact that these drives are bulky and our server room is already pretty cramped. Does anyone have any suggestions? Are my concerns valid? Is my suggestion of disk/tape the best solution? _________________________ Daniel DeStefano PC Support Specialist IAG Research 345 Park Avenue South, 12th Floor New York, NY 10010 T. 212.871.5262 F. 212.871.5300 www.iagr.net <http://www.iagr.net/> Measuring Ad Effectiveness on Television The information contained in this communication is confidential, may be privileged and is intended for the exclusive use of the above named addressee(s). If you are not the intended recipient(s), you are expressly prohibited from copying, distributing, disseminating, or in any other way using any of the information contained within this communication. If you have received this communication in error, please contact the sender by telephone 212.871.5262 or by response via e-mail. List info : http://www.activedir.org/mail_list.htm List FAQ : http://www.activedir.org/list_faq.htm List archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/activedir%40mail.activedir.org/ List info : http://www.activedir.org/mail_list.htm List FAQ : http://www.activedir.org/list_faq.htm List archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/activedir%40mail.activedir.org/ List info : http://www.activedir.org/mail_list.htm List FAQ : http://www.activedir.org/list_faq.htm List archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/activedir%40mail.activedir.org/
