Tape drive alternative besides online backup for offsite backup
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I have a client that refuses to use online backup. The only thing I could think of at the time to get an offsite backup was a tape backup. Long story short, I'm on my 5th tape drive (under warranty) and I'm really starting to wonder if it's a bad model of tape drive (HP DAT 160) , bad backup software (Barracuda Yosemite Server Basic), or the fact that I'm using USB passthrough in ESXi.
The backup job is backing up about 50GB of data each night. That would fit on a USB drive. Is anyone doing a backup to USB flash drive? Any other alternatives to tape that I'm not thinking of?
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portable usb hdd
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Backup to a Synology box rather than a single USB. You can then get iSCSI mounting direct. A gigabit network will be faster than a usb 2.0 connection for backups. You want speed of restore as well as speed of backup.
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@momurda said in Tape drive alternative besides online backup for offsite backup:
portable usb hdd
Wouldn't that be 8 times more expensive, larger, and slower than a USB flash drive? What am I missing?
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@Breffni-Potter said in Tape drive alternative besides online backup for offsite backup:
Backup to a Synology box rather than a single USB. You can then get iSCSI mounting direct. A gigabit network will be faster than a usb 2.0 connection for backups. You want speed of restore as well as speed of backup.
I already have a local backup for speed. I need an offsite backup.
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@Mike-Davis said in Tape drive alternative besides online backup for offsite backup:
@Breffni-Potter said in Tape drive alternative besides online backup for offsite backup:
Backup to a Synology box rather than a single USB. You can then get iSCSI mounting direct. A gigabit network will be faster than a usb 2.0 connection for backups. You want speed of restore as well as speed of backup.
I already have a local backup for speed. I need an offsite backup.
Site to site link.
Then you eliminate the need for the careless mistake prone human who will forget to take the USB out of the server.
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@Mike-Davis I've been using usb hard drives for off site backups for the past 5 years. They need replaced every 4 years or so, but that should be expected. At only 50GB, you could get that on USB3 flash drives easily. (Micro Center branded ones are my favorite, for the warranty.) I've gone so far as to add a USB3 card to the one server at both locations. It's speedy, easy, and just works.
I'd love to do a site-to-site VPN, but we're barely reaching internet speeds faster than dialup around here.
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I suppose USB flash drives could be OK for Off-site. I'd get 5, one for each business day of the week. Then at work (hopefully) you would only loose one day if the current drive failed.
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@Dashrender said in Tape drive alternative besides online backup for offsite backup:
I suppose USB flash drives could be OK for Off-site. I'd get 5, one for each business day of the week. Then at work (hopefully) you would only loose one day if the current drive failed.
I'm doing grandfather - father - son backups, which is why the cost of them matter. I'll need like 15 just to get started.
@travisdh1 What software are you using?
@Breffni-Potter Site to site is out because that's "online" as far as they are concerned...
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@Mike-Davis said in Tape drive alternative besides online backup for offsite backup:
@travisdh1 What software are you using?
I'm using Crashplan VMs for backup servers. So if a tornado takes out one of the sites, the restore process is Server+Hypervisor -> restore backup server -> restore the stuffs. It does work (I'm doing a test for this currently.)
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Sweet mother of god I had no idea anyone still used DAT160. I used these when I started in IT and they were bomb proof!
How long a period did it take to kill 4 of them? Are you cleaning them regularly? Do you use fresh media every couple of years? Do you rotate through media regularly and not write to the same tape a zillion times?
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@MattSpeller said in Tape drive alternative besides online backup for offsite backup:
Sweet mother of god I had no idea anyone still used DAT160
How long a period did it take to kill 4 of them? Are you cleaning them regularly? Do you use fresh media every couple of years?
DAT80 was the thing when I first had to deal with tapes. They upgraded that to an LTO2 20 tape robot eventually.
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@travisdh1 said in Tape drive alternative besides online backup for offsite backup:
@MattSpeller said in Tape drive alternative besides online backup for offsite backup:
Sweet mother of god I had no idea anyone still used DAT160
How long a period did it take to kill 4 of them? Are you cleaning them regularly? Do you use fresh media every couple of years?
DAT80 was the thing when I first had to deal with tapes. They upgraded that to an LTO2 20 tape robot eventually.
Same here but we went to LTO3 dual head library with dual magazines! They are really a beautiful piece of engineering.
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@Mike-Davis said in Tape drive alternative besides online backup for offsite backup:
@Dashrender said in Tape drive alternative besides online backup for offsite backup:
I suppose USB flash drives could be OK for Off-site. I'd get 5, one for each business day of the week. Then at work (hopefully) you would only loose one day if the current drive failed.
I'm doing grandfather - father - son backups, which is why the cost of them matter. I'll need like 15 just to get started.
@travisdh1 What software are you using?
@Breffni-Potter Site to site is out because that's "online" as far as they are concerned...
That's a tape mentality - do you need to maintain it? With the speed of USB 3 sticks, just do a full backup to a stick every day/night.
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@Dashrender said in Tape drive alternative besides online backup for offsite backup:
@Mike-Davis said in Tape drive alternative besides online backup for offsite backup:
@Dashrender said in Tape drive alternative besides online backup for offsite backup:
I suppose USB flash drives could be OK for Off-site. I'd get 5, one for each business day of the week. Then at work (hopefully) you would only loose one day if the current drive failed.
I'm doing grandfather - father - son backups, which is why the cost of them matter. I'll need like 15 just to get started.
@travisdh1 What software are you using?
@Breffni-Potter Site to site is out because that's "online" as far as they are concerned...
That's a tape mentality - do you need to maintain it? With the speed of USB 3 sticks, just do a full backup to a stick every day/night.
I never thought I would do this, but someone has to stand up for the tapes
Tape is cryptolocker proof.
Tape is "oops I brushed past the server and broke the USB stick off" proof
Tape media is really affordable per GB
Tape is designed to work with offsite storage for DR
... other tape goodness that someone else will remind me of I'm sure -
@MattSpeller said in Tape drive alternative besides online backup for offsite backup:
@Dashrender said in Tape drive alternative besides online backup for offsite backup:
@Mike-Davis said in Tape drive alternative besides online backup for offsite backup:
@Dashrender said in Tape drive alternative besides online backup for offsite backup:
I suppose USB flash drives could be OK for Off-site. I'd get 5, one for each business day of the week. Then at work (hopefully) you would only loose one day if the current drive failed.
I'm doing grandfather - father - son backups, which is why the cost of them matter. I'll need like 15 just to get started.
@travisdh1 What software are you using?
@Breffni-Potter Site to site is out because that's "online" as far as they are concerned...
That's a tape mentality - do you need to maintain it? With the speed of USB 3 sticks, just do a full backup to a stick every day/night.
I never thought I would do this, but someone has to stand up for the tapes
Tape is cryptolocker proof.
Tape is "oops I brushed past the server and broke the USB stick off" proof
Tape media is really affordable per GB
Tape is designed to work with offsite storage for DR
... other tape goodness that someone else will remind me of I'm sureMostly correct. USB Hard Drives and Flash sticks are about the same or less per GB now (at least for the consumer level stuff.)
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@MattSpeller said in Tape drive alternative besides online backup for offsite backup:
@Dashrender said in Tape drive alternative besides online backup for offsite backup:
@Mike-Davis said in Tape drive alternative besides online backup for offsite backup:
@Dashrender said in Tape drive alternative besides online backup for offsite backup:
I suppose USB flash drives could be OK for Off-site. I'd get 5, one for each business day of the week. Then at work (hopefully) you would only loose one day if the current drive failed.
I'm doing grandfather - father - son backups, which is why the cost of them matter. I'll need like 15 just to get started.
@travisdh1 What software are you using?
@Breffni-Potter Site to site is out because that's "online" as far as they are concerned...
That's a tape mentality - do you need to maintain it? With the speed of USB 3 sticks, just do a full backup to a stick every day/night.
I never thought I would do this, but someone has to stand up for the tapes
Tape is cryptolocker proof.
Tape is "oops I brushed past the server and broke the USB stick off" proof
Tape media is really affordable per GB
Tape is designed to work with offsite storage for DR
... other tape goodness that someone else will remind me of I'm sureI bet when you consider the cost of the tape drive and the tapes themselves, they are way more expensive than USB sticks/drives.
And DAT is pretty slow too!
Crypto locker proof? eh? How is the USB drive not Crypto locker proof when it's sitting at home on the shelf? Either system is only crypto locker proof after the data is stored on the device, granted the USB requires the extra step of removing it from the machine. But that really should be mitigated by the backup server/appliance not having any file shares from itself that crypto ware can infect.
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4 drives in less than 3 years. When I was brought in backups were a big concern to them because the last guy did nightly backups to an external hard drive, but they discovered a quickbooks error and needed to go back a month. He was overwriting the backup every night, so they had nothing useful to work from.
I tried to talk them in to online backups, and eventually went for a USB tape drive because I needed something that work work through ESXi.
I'll have to see if the software will let me swap out USB drives with out re-configuring the backup job each time.
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This post is deleted! -
It's purely security. It doesn't help my argument when things keep getting hacked.
