Hi there,


I'm just taking a survey on what everyone thinks is a good backup
option for a small company.


Currently we use external drives to backup our data spread over 4
servers. ServerA in a months worth of incrimental backups swells to
say 500gb, ServerB after 1 month is around 50gb, ServerC is around
70GB, and ServerD is about 100gb. So about 730 in one months time of
space is needed (uncompressed).


ServerA has a 500gb external drive, while ServerB has a 160gb, Server C

has a 250gb, ServerD has a 500gb one. We have 3 sets of external
drives so we can cycle 2 of the drives every week and each quarter
leave one behind (we can only go back 1 quarter).


So in the new system we want to be able to goto any quarters worth of
data or go back to any year (so you would have to keep 4 quarters each
year, pull these tapes out).


We do have gigabit eithernet between servers.. I was thinking of
putting a tape backup device on ServerA and send the backup data over
the LAN from the other 3 (assuming this would pull about 280 GB/hour
across gigabit ethernet).


I found one device that will do 245GB/hour and has a total of 8 slots
for about $4000 (each LTO3 tape is around $100 and holds 400GB
uncompressed):


http://www.basoncomputer.com/GW823/item.aspx


So I'm wondering if this is the best option.. price range we are
looking at is $5000 to $14000 for the system. But when you factor in
that one tape wont hold all 700 GB data in 1 month.. we need multiple
tapes. We also would like to be able to direct data to goto specific
tapes in the loader.. so one server would use 2 tapes, the other 3
servers would have 3 seperate tapes. I'm not sure if this is possible.



Also wondering if it is possible to take the SCSI cable going from the
tape drive system and split it 4 ways, so we could avoid the bottleneck

of the Ethernet speeds (which spec wise doesnt look that bad, but
reality is usually slower).


I'm assuming harddrive arrays or NAS are out of the question as we need

to be able to take a backup set for a given week/month/quarter/year
offsite.


Thanks

First, I would stay far away from Bason Computers, I have some
indirect(I didn't purchase the hardware but used it till it crashed)
experience with them, and there are many reviews of them online saying
that almost anything from them is really a refurb or used part.

Personally, I would still research a NAS setup, how often do you need
to take offsite? You could even get a couple HD based units for that
price range and IMO be faster and safer than relying on tapes, just
quickly I found a Buffalo Terrastation 1.6TB(raid1, should be 1.2TB in
Raid5 which is an option) external storage unit with network interface
for about $1600, they have a new pro model but I can not currently find
any pricing on it, as it is a new product.

With these price ranges you could actually buy 3 of them and run them
in a rotation period that leaves them offsite. Buffalo might not be a
great business name, but it is sure better than leaving your business
in the hands of one 'Bason Computer'.

http://www.pricewatch.com/dl.aspx?q=373
http://www.resellerratings.com/seller1836.html

I typically would not reply with something like this without further
recommendations, but I have just had so many HDs fail that have come
from Bason, something is not right there, new SCSI drives don't come
dead so often, nor go dead 3-4 months after they get into production so
often when they are really new. New HD's also come with manufacturers
warranty, but typically not theirs, that should be a sign.

Hi there.. thanks for the tip. So you think NAS is a better option
than say LTO3 (400gb tapes) at 245-490 GB/h. I guess the only
failsafe way of doing NAS is to have multiple ones, like you mention,
and rotate them.. or I guess using RAID5 would protect things too?
What about the speed of a NAS backup vs tape. My other concern is that
a NAS is networked.. so the speed would be gigabit.. I would think this
to be slower than say having 80% of the data backed up directly to a
tape unit, while the the other 20% comes from the other 3 servers via
network. I dont know much about NAS options, though I've heard about
fiber connections to speed things up.

I saw an 8 slot LTO drive for around $4900 (6.4 TB), and yes infact
this particular unit was Bason.. so I will definitely avoid them based
on your comments. I'll also check out some more specs on Buffalo.

Thanks again.