[Pc_Support] Re: Backup methodology -- Staged migration ...

[Bryan J. Smith]

On Tue, 2006-06-27 at 15:08 -0400, Bryan J. Smith wrote:
> So _what_ are you going to do?
> I'm scratching my head on that.  
> You're going to go around with removable/portable drives?
> And how is _that_ going to save you money?
> Especially if you have to "down" the server to remove disks?
> Or spend $100-300 on a 3Ware or SAS card so you can hot-swap SATA?
> Why not spend a little more money and put in a _real_ backup server for
> about $1,000 with 500GB of disk?  Seriously -- put in a $500 system with
> a $100 3Ware Escalade 7006/8006-2LP and two $200 500GB ATA/SATA drives.
> And how long do you expect that SATA drive to last, "flying around"?
> Or how many SATA drives are you going to "buy" to do such?
> And how often have you budgeted their "replacement"?
> $1,000 adds up really fast.  ;->

Hey, I'm not trying to be a "my way dammit," but I'm trying to save you
some grief.  With your current "plan," understand what you're doing ...

1.  You're changing the hardware on _production_ servers
2.  You're now putting server reliability at the merge of "consumer"
external storage (not good)
3.  You're adding/removing external storage on servers (downtime?)

That's 3 strikes in my book.

I've offered you an option that costs $1,000 (running CentOS 4), maybe
$1,500+ if you buy Symantec NetBackup Server for Linux (~$400) + a few
Windows/Linux client licenses (~$40/each).

It ...

A.  Gives you 500GB of fixed, but _separate_ storage on your net
B.  Does _not_ add "new tasks/issues" to your _production_ servers
C.  Let's you decide when to "move your tape drive" over to it

You can keep using your tape drive as you wish on your production server
with BackupExec.

You can "pilot" the network backups to the new server at your leisure,
including moving the tape drive over when you want.

You can "test" (using Symantec's free eval) using NetBackup to see how
well it will do with your setup, etc... -- the agents running on the
Windows servers.

And being Linux, you can use it as a Rsync/SSH server for backing up
subdirectories, etc... as you see fit with shell and other scripts (even
if NetBackup ends up backing up those directories).

And if it works well, and you need more storage, you can _always_ throw
in a newer 3Ware 9550SX card with more disks later on.

You'll ...
- _Mitigate_ changes to your _production_ servers
- Save time and, probably, downtime as well

-- Bryan

P.S.  And yes, I do this for a living -- point out where companies and
their IT departments are spending more time and effort let alone
introducing risks to their _production_ servers, when they could save a
lot of time and downtime, mitigate (possibly eliminate) changes to their
_production_ servers/infrastructure, all for a small amount of money --
and in many cases -- actually no more money than they were going to
spend (before even considering man-hours, possible downtime, etc...).


-- 
Bryan J. Smith           Professional, technical annoyance
mailto:b.j.smith at ieee.org     http://thebs413.blogspot.com
----------------------------------------------------------
The existence of Linux has far more to do with the breakup
of AT&T's monopoly than anything Microsoft has ever done.