X-Serve Backup

[PantherMac]

What's everyone using to Backup their X-serves? DLT, AIT, LTO? I've experience w/ FC Changers, but not sure what the popular stand-alone solutions are, and what's the best software to run (Retrospect seems so..... 90's, LOL!). FireWire LTO drive and Retrospect?
Thanks.

- Mac

[dub]

We are using Sony AIT via firewire and Retrospect. Works decent enough, just make sure to make and extra copy of each AIT.. JIC.

-Dub

[PantherMac]

Thanks Dub,

Why the 2 copies? Faith in the format, or Retrospect? LOL!
Thanks.

- Mac

[dub]

A little of both I guess

Eventually I am going to be doing 3 copies total, one for daily use pulling files off of, one for the fireproof cabinet in the server room, and one for off-site storage.

Tape is usually the best storage option for longevity I believe AIT is rated for like 30 years if stored correctly.

-Dub

[Sylvain.H]

The Xserve system disk (80Gb) is backed up every month thanks to Carbon Copy Cloner onto a second hard drive plugged.
Then, we've got 2 Xserve RAID and we use tri-backup to replicate the first RAID on the second RAID, every night.

Edited by: Sylvain.H on Apr 29, 2008 11:30 AM

[neotrog]

Now that's a man who loves his data!!!

The problem being the same one I'm facing. Backup to disk is fast convenient and, at the moment, arguably, the most inexpensive. It's all in one place though. A good fire and you have nothing. LTO seems to fit the bill for the biggest wad of removable data storage that can go in a safe or off to another plant. I always have two levels of redundancy in my tapes. Tape is insidious and will ball up in the read head for sure if you ever have just one copy.

Retrospect has taken a serious downhill ride since being bought EMC, in my opinion. "Back in the day" it was easy and reliable, though a bit pokey on the restores. Now, the GUI is way to complicated and "Veritasy" and occasionally it just errors out. Still, there's not a lot of alternatives that look better.

[Ed Enders]

Very simple here. Xserve using retrospect Copies last month and current months jobs to 2 different external hard drives. I also once a month burn dvd's of the prior months files. I auto catalog using autocat to the same share point making searching for old files a cinch. I can't picture it being any simpler than that

[chasd]

> {quote:title=neotrog wrote:}{quote}
> Backup to disk is fast convenient and, at the moment, arguably, the most inexpensive. It's all in one place though.

Backup to disk, but across the network. The risk that both ends of our building will burn is very low because of how it is built. I can backup the data on a server across the network via rsync almost as quickly as locally attached storage. Much faster than locally attached tape.


Chasd.

[PantherMac]

> {quote:title=neotrog wrote:}{quote}
> . Now, the GUI is way to complicated and "Veritasy"

Bawhahahahahaaa! Man, that makes me cringe (NetBackup for 5 years! LOL!)
Thanks for the feedback all.
FWIW, I recently purchased a Firewire800 VXA Tape drive and NetBackup Software license for about $2k (w/ 1 year maint. on software).
Should be enough to dump what I need nightly (speed and size -wise). Now I just have to convince the boss a couple grand worth of tapes is a wise investment!
Thanks.

- Mac