Educause Security Discussion mailing list archives
Re: backup strategies
From: Charlie Prothero <Charlie.Prothero () KEYSTONE EDU>
Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2005 12:48:45 -0400
Brian, Keystone College is in the process of migrating from ArcServe to Tivoli Storage Manager with a 24-slot LTO 2 tape library. Tivoli is much more complex and time consuming to learn and set up, but I think it will be worth the effort. One key element that I think places Tivoli above the competition is that every backup after the initial one is incremental - forever. The system keeps a database of what is on each tape in the library, and it thus knows what percentage of each tape is outdated. When that percentage on a particular tape hits a user-defined level, the system automatically copies the data that is still good from that tape onto another one and reclaims the original tape for re-use. It also allows you to maintain a set of offsite tapes that are built in a similar fashion - without going back to the source servers. An offsite tape pool is defined to shadow your active storage pool, and a scheduled job incrementally copies all new data in the active pool to tapes designated for the offsite set. Very cool, but not exactly a 5-minute setup job... Naturally, this affects our plan, which is what you inquired about in the first place. We're still on the learning curve as far as what the system can support, but our general goal is to have everything backed up nightly, with the offsite tape set kept "reasonably" up-to-date. We have not yet defined what time lag would be acceptable for the offsite tapes. We do not want to send half empty tapes out for offsite storage, but we also don't want to hold them in IT for so long that the offsite pool becomes significantly outdated. Our ERP system sends a nightly backup to a server located at the other end of campus, so our most mission-critical data is quite safe from building-related problems. Good luck in your project! - Charlie. Charlie Prothero IT Director Keystone College -----Original Message----- From: Brian Fetcie [mailto:fetcieb () CANTON EDU] Sent: Thursday, April 14, 2005 11:22 AM To: SECURITY () LISTSERV EDUCAUSE EDU Subject: [SECURITY] backup strategies Hello everyone, I need to redesign our tape backup plan for our servers and would like to know if anyone has advice, plans they can share, or point me in the direction of some industry best practices. I've been Googling away on this topic for the past couple days with only moderate success. I'm interested in what others are doing and any help would be appreciated. Thanks! -- ------------------------------ Brian Fetcie Systems/Security Administrator -------------------------- SUNY Canton 34 Cornell Drive Canton, NY 13617 -------------------------- fetcieb () canton edu ------------------------------ ********** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Discussion Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/. ********** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Discussion Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/.
Current thread:
- backup strategies Brian Fetcie (Apr 14)
- <Possible follow-ups>
- Re: backup strategies Charlie Prothero (Apr 14)
- Re: backup strategies Tim Howard (Apr 15)