________________________________
From: Brian Mathis <brian.mathis+centos@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: CentOS mailing list <centos@xxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Sunday, March 11, 2012 5:38 PM
Subject: Re: CentOS Server Backup Options
On Sun, Mar 11, 2012 at 8:12 PM, Scott Walker
<Scott_Walker@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> What do you guys recommend for backing up a small CentOS server in a
> business environment. It will have (3) 300gb drives in a raid 5 array but I
> don't anticipate more than about 25gb of data that needs to be backed up
> each night.
> I want a lot of backups with a rotation scheme that included daily, weekly,
> and monthly copies. I want the daily copies of the data kept until the next
> week, and the weekly copy being kept for four weeks, and the monthly copies
> being kept for a year.
>
> The vendor is recommending a RD1000 Removable Disk device. This looks like
> it has great specs. Each cartridge holds 160gb (non-compressed) and the
> drive costs about $420 but seems that with each removable cartridge costing
> $128, we may be limited to how many cartridges we could have, thus perhaps
> not retaining backup instances as long as I like.
>
> I asked about a HP DAT160 tape drive. Each tape holds 160gb
> (non-compressed) and the drive costs about $730, and each tape only costs
> about $24, so it would be economical to have lots of backup instances saved
> for a long period of time.
>
> I have been using tape and the backup rotation scheme mentioned above for
> over 20 years. The vendor is telling me they don't recommend tape drives
> anymore and all of their customers are using removable hard drive for local
> backups. Am I missing something? My instincts tell me the tape drive is
> the right solution for a system with a small amount of data, where the
> system is used only from 8am - 5pm (so backup speed is not critical) and
> where we want to save backup instances for a long time before overwriting
> them.
>
> Any input would be welcomed.
A relatively inexpensive solution is to use a system with removable SATA disks (for the backup media) and use an open source backup application called Bacula ( http://bacula.org )
I have a SuperMicro with 8x1TB SATA disks. I keep one for the OS and application, and swap out the other 7 every week.
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