Backup strategy for small business

[suityou01]

A friend of mine has asked me to comment on a backup strategy for his SME. 5 staff, and an historical accrual of around 150GB of data in the form of documents and spreadsheets. There's now a SQL server in the mix, sql express which has no agent for creating schedule jobs sadly.

The system runs Linux, so the software I found for this is called Bacula. All of the documentation talks about tape drives. He wants to use USB drives. Again I found from Bacula a scripts called vchanger, that turns your usb drive into a virtual autochanger.

The thing I find confusing, is that it uses multiple partitions, each partion represents a tape. So one usb disk could be a 7 day tape cycle for example. This seems risky to me as you could lose 7 days worth of data if the disk fails.

Also he's not keen of the idea of being chained to the office to have to change usb drives daily, as he currently is.

So my question is, has anyone implemented a virtual tape autochanger using disks, and how did you approach it?

[stek]

A friend of mine has asked me to comment on a backup strategy for his SME. 5 staff, and an historical accrual of around 150GB of data in the form of documents and spreadsheets. There's now a SQL server in the mix, sql express which has no agent for creating schedule jobs sadly.

The system runs Linux, so the software I found for this is called Bacula. All of the documentation talks about tape drives. He wants to use USB drives. Again I found from Bacula a scripts called vchanger, that turns your usb drive into a virtual autochanger.

The thing I find confusing, is that it uses multiple partitions, each partion represents a tape. So one usb disk could be a 7 day tape cycle for example. This seems risky to me as you could lose 7 days worth of data if the disk fails.

Also he's not keen of the idea of being chained to the office to have to change usb drives daily, as he currently is.

So my question is, has anyone implemented a virtual tape autochanger using disks, and how did you approach it?

I've set up VTL's in AIX, but not that pile of poop Linux. In fact i've done the full TSM with storage pools etc but that costs money, still it's dream on AIX but a total fudge on Linux.

Hate these cheapo lash-ups, get them to do it properly!

[suityou01]

I've set up VTL's in AIX, but not that pile of poop Linux. In fact i've done the full TSM with storage pools etc but that costs money, still it's dream on AIX but a total fudge on Linux.

Hate these cheapo lash-ups, get them to do it properly!

So far, it's working well. Active directory, KVM, email. All delivering many thousands of pounds worth of stable virtual infrastructure for nix.

Ive never been one to blame my tools mind

[stek]

So far, it's working well. Active directory, KVM, email. All delivering many thousands of pounds worth of stable virtual infrastructure for nix.

Ive never been one to blame my tools mind

Linux isn't Unix!

Anyway that's all good until the day it all goes wrong like when my previously perfect rsync solution at home lost the missus' Hamburg pics......

[suityou01]

Linux isn't Unix!

Anyway that's all good until the day it all goes wrong like when my previously perfect rsync solution at home lost the missus' Hamburg pics......

I never said it was.

Now, forget about Linux. Just advise how you would implement a tape backup strategy for an SME.

[unixman]

Does it have to be tape/virtual tape ? Backula should be able to treat your USB drives as a local disk backup target, writing the backups straight to disk (into the disk file system).

This does not provide off-site backups, so if the whole office burned down, the backups might also be lost. To remedy that your friend could for example buy 7 disks, clearly label them and take them home, bringing only that day's disk into the office each day.

[stek]

Does it have to be tape/virtual tape ? Backula should be able to treat your USB drives as a local disk backup target, writing the backups straight to disk (into the disk file system).

This does not provide off-site backups, so if the whole office burned down, the backups might also be lost. To remedy that your friend could for example buy 7 disks, clearly label them and take them home, bringing only that day's disk into the office each day.

Or additional/concurrent backups to cloud....

[suityou01]

Does it have to be tape/virtual tape ? Backula should be able to treat your USB drives as a local disk backup target, writing the backups straight to disk (into the disk file system).

This does not provide off-site backups, so if the whole office burned down, the backups might also be lost. To remedy that your friend could for example buy 7 disks, clearly label them and take them home, bringing only that day's disk into the office each day.

Would be ideal. I just couldn't find an example of how to get Bacula to do this. The forums seemed to indicate that vchanger was the way forward.

I think 2 disks, rotated would be ideal. Then when he isn't there to rotate, the current backup just gets overwritten.

I'll do some more reading.

[unixman]

Linux is Unix.

[suityou01]

Linux is Unix.