Network Guru question

[kenyee]

Originally Posted by Bob Thomas

Tcould type so I got defaulted to the position

LOL. Now that's funny

I think we need to know more about what your data is composed of.
49GB is a lot of stuff to back up daily. Is most of it Outlook/Exchange mail files? If so, one quick way to cut the size down is getting mail policy tools that purge or back up mail and forces users to keep their mail files smaller.
I'm assuming your arrest DB/app is no in Outlook/Exchange (or I hope it's not).

Simplest thing to do is seriously reconsider incrementals. Most people don't do full backups every day. It's usually weekly fulls and daily incrementals w/ rotating tapes in/out to a backup location.

Nowadays, the thing most people do is to use a network storage devices to do backups to. It'll go faster, but the main issue is not being able to move it offsite easily (you can get two and swap them weekly though).

It'd help if we knew what your budget is as well...

[striperman36]

budget for IT? Its a police dept!!

[JohnR]

Option 1: Clean out some data. Find out WHAT is s#^&#^&#^&#^&#^&g up all of your information, and trim it. This will reduce your backup times and keep your existing system going longer. BUTTTTTT!!!!!! There is a finite timeline on how long tapes will last and tape drives. They will fail. 5 years is in that fail range. Price: Cheap - time to rumage through to see what can be eliminated or trimmed by a system professional

Option 2: A 5 year old DLT will take a LONG time to back all that stuff up. A new LTO-2 will backup your 50GB in 1.5-2 hours with verification. The tapes capacity is in the couple hundred gig range. This is the traditional way, and for ease, I would do a full nightly with Monday through Thursday tapes, Friday 2-5, and Friday 1 Odd Month, Friday 1 Even Month. This will give you some individual file recovery based on date over extended periods of time. Even better is having the ability to retire a monthly tape but that can get costly. Price: Couple grand

Option 2, look into a DATTO. I am installing these at several clients in the next month or two. http://www.dattobackup.com/ This will allow a full data backup onsite AND offsite. Because we know someone religiously takes a tape offsite for disaster recovery

Price $300-800 initial outlay, $200 - 400 per year. ASSUMES you have decent internet speeds.


Ohhh and next time they are looking to do servers, you guys should get a Small Business Server - perfect for your size organization....

[Bob Thomas]

Unfortunately, our budget for the IT was HACKED to bits by the town. It was in effort to save manpower. We do have "ways" of playing with numbers but those ways are going fast.

John - I think this IBM server is a "small business" server. I just dug out the specs:

IBM E Server X Series 225
2.5 gb RAM
Server 2003
2 Mirror RAID Drives
CD Rom
Backup: DLT VS80
Veritas 10

It's this bad boy
http://reviews.cnet.com/soho-servers...-30066685.html

Probably need to do some budget figuring here to see what we have to deal with.

Thanks for the info. Going to hit the boss up on Weds

[JohnR]

Bob - then you need to see how you can whittle down the files getting backed up. With less stuff getting backed up - by getting rid of stuff you don't need - the better you will be. Keep in mind I have clients with younger DLT VS80 drives that have either failed, or the tapes are no good (which tells me you have 40GB tapes that are "advertised" to get 80 but as you can see really don't).

Are those the original tapes? Your backups are probably no good if they are the original tapes copied over repeatedly for 5 years....

The "SBS" part is a version of windows Server 2003 that comes with its own Exchange and some other stuff - easier to manage for the non-geek

[Bob Thomas]

Not original tapes. We cycle them out each year.

Going to have to see what else can be whittled down. I think we're pretty much "whittled out" but will have to see.

Thanks for the help. Probably time to upgrade, as much as it hurts