Re: backup strategies

[Charlie Prothero <Charlie.Prothero () KEYSTONE EDU>]

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library, and it thus knows what percentage of each tape is outdated.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pool becomes significantly outdated.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
------------------------------

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