[svlug] backup solutions? - tell me more ???

[Rick Moen]

begin  Alvin Oga quotation:

> yeah...but than again...we are talking about backups for users vs
> corps... most users dont have tape libraries ??? or mammath drives
> etc..etc.... mammoths are nice drives and nice tapes...but....

Well, that 500GB hard disk size figure was from your post.

But if you're talking about an individual with a 36.7 GB SCSI drive 
($590, wow!) he'd probably be best served by a DDS3 DAT drive.  Cheap,
effective.

> and i dont trust tapes...especially not a set of ummm to make a 
> backup of 500Gb system.... lose a tape and *ooopss*...

Very rare with decent drive maintenance, and enforcement of a
tape-retirement scheme.  Besides, that's why you keep multiple
_generational_ full backups plus daily differentials.  Reduces single
points of failure and gives you fallbacks.

> and yeah...big difference between archives for the lawyers to sift
> thru....vs "backups" and restor the disk or the file cause somebody
> did something...

To elaborate on what I was saying:

Archival storage:  Moving a body of data off of primary storage
to less-available media where it still might be randomly accessed
and searched at high speed, but probably with lower convenience.  E.g.,
burn a CDR of all files relating to a corporate project, after it's
been closed out and billed to customers, then delete the project tree
from the company's live fileserver.  Great Murphy almost guarantees that
your staff will soon thereafter plead to recover some of those files,
but won't be able to remember the exact pathnames to that data, as it
was stored on the fileserver.  With tapes, the sysadmins would probably
have an excruciating series of iterative wild-goose chases, as the
clueless staffers requested restores of numerous wrong files, before
hitting on the right one.  By contrast, if using archival-type media
such as CDRs, the staff can sign out the CDR from the archive
collection, search it on his own time, and return it when he's done,
saving sysadmin time and frustration.

Backup storage:  Both full and incremental (or, better, differential)
snapshots of system state at intervals, generated at high speed with
maximal automation, with the aim of ensuring recovery from mass data
loss or file corruption.  Emphasis on high data-insurance value, at
the expense of convenience / labour-intensiveness for casual restore
jobs.  (Classically, this means DAT, DLT, AIT tape drives, and larger
drives or libraries where needed.)

-- 
Cheers,                                      "Reality is not optional."
Rick Moen                                             -- Thomas Sowell
rick at linuxmafia.com