Looking for a recommendation for a backup solution

[Alan_152]

It has been awhile since I worked with any kind of network backup product, but I've been tasked with finding a solution for what I suspect is a simple issue.

Our biggest problem right now is that our current backup solution (an off-the-shelf 1TB NAS) is used so heavily for non-backup purposes that it now needs a backup solution of its own. We do, however, have other devices that need to be backed up at least occasionally as well.

Here are the parameters:

* Somewhere between 2-3TB of data
* the data to be backed up is from a variety of NFS, NAS, MS Windows, and Linux sources (about 20 sources in total).
* The client/server can be commercial software, but we prefer open-source.
* The boss prefers removable disk drive solutions, but will also look at virtual tape backup, JBOD, iSCSI cluster, or LTO3 tape libraries
* I'd prefer a turnkey solution, but we do have the ability to build from scratch using commodity components. Local skill is excellent, but personnel bandwidth is a bit of an issue.
* Network bandwidth is not a problem.


Thanks in advance.

P.S. This thread has been moved from General to Automated Backup. - Hp Forum Moderator

[Heironimus · Accepted solution]

Your open source options are pretty limited, I think bacula and amanda may be the only ones that are widely used. You could probably also script up rsnapshot without too much difficulty, though it may be better for keeping online copies than for backup to any kind of removable media.

[Andres_13]

I think you need to meet 3 key features:

Software: There are a lot of commecial solutions for you:

- HP Data Protetor
- Veritas net backup
- Legato

All of this products are quite expensive but very very efficient. The thing is how much money you can / want expend.

Options in the free software are limited and the best solution you can use is amanda.

Hardware: You must decide where your data will remain, again you have a lot of options:

- Libraries
- Virtual Libraries
- Single drives
- JBOD
- Some kind of RAID
- EVA, XP...

And again you must decide based on how much money you want / can expend and how valuable your information is.

Physical Media: Pointing to tapes (LTO3, LTO 4), Virtual media pools, disks... how many time you want retain your information available and how much money you have.

As you can see the common factor is: Money.

Personally I use Data Protector which access it's clients thru a SAN, backs up in LTO4 medias which are in MSL 4048 Tape libraries and production info is on a XP24000... not cheap I gotta say, but the best choise for us.

So, do you have something in mind?

Regards!

[Alan_152]

We have decided on a nice Dell dual LTO-3, 16 tape unit, plus HPDP.