At 01:46 PM 7/19/2004, Mccormack, Andrew wrote:
>I need to implement a backup system my department. Does anyone have any experience/advise on how to do a backup system? I am thinking of just doing a file backup instead of system backup because I would not have enough space to store entire system images. Would you recommend a system wide backup or just a file backup? What type of software is good to use with backups? I probably need something that can be installed on the users desktop and can be run automatically without intervention. I will probably use windows 2000 server as the OS to host the backup.
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>I need to support up to 70 users. All the desktops have windows XP or windows 98. I am interested mainly in the software and backup strategies people have used for there departments.
We do occasional disk image backups as well as regular file backups for those users who want to get in on the service. Each of these types of backup serves a different purpose.
We use ArcserveIT (now known as Brightstor) for the file backups. The media are DLT tapes. These backups are initiated by the server. There are two servers that have DLT tape drives, each with a 7-tape library. I recently bought another server with just one DLT tape drive (no library). Before buying I looked at SDLT and some of the other things that have come out since I got started with DLT 6 years ago, but nothing else that I would be willing to use can beat it on a $$ per gigabtye basis. (Nor can CDs and a burner & changer, even if time was no object and I could get the whole process automated. I've sat down many times with a spreadsheet and pricelists to try to make something else come out to be more economical, but so far haven't been able to make it work. I mention this only because every once in a while somebody asks me about using CDs.)
Files on our servers get backed up every night. Full backups of the file server disks are done once a week, and incrementals on the other days. We can't offer that frequent a backup for desktop computers. They get full backups once a month and incrementals about twice a week, depending on whatever mutually agreed-on schedule we come up with. (Note that for desktop computers, "full" means full backups of the designated folders, not full backups of everything on the hard disks.) To make this all a little easier, we encourage new computers' disks to get partitioned into a c: drive for programs and and anything that messes with that abominable monstrosity known as a registry, and a d: drive or something else for data. Not all software cooperates with this arrangement. But if c: drives get too big, we can't do the disk images, or at least can't do them very often.
For desktop backups, I retain all the monthly and incremental tapes for 6 months.
For file server backups, I retain all the weekly and incremental backups for 2 months, the monthly backups for a year, and for tapes 2-3 years old I retain only a selected few using a schedule I won't bother to describe here.
We also have a system for rotating backup tapes to two other buildings. I don't have a fireproof safe in any of the locations, but in all three locations I use wall-mounted storage boxes designed to at least protect the tapes in case the sprinkler system gets activated.
One of my next projects is to provide something better for notebook computers. The server-initiated backups aren't very useful for mobile computers that may or may not be on the net when it's their turn.
John Gorentz
W.K. Kellogg Biological Station
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