[ale] Backup strategies

[Pat Regan]

Chris Fowler wrote:
>> If you're a smaller IT shop that might be a pretty big expense.
>> Especially if you have to do work to move tapes off-site every day.
>>   
> 
> This is something I live with and it hits a nerve.   I've dealt with 
> people "too cheap" to purchase a full replicated clone of their server 
> for use when their's
> die.   During training I inform them that if their server dies then it 
> can be 2-3 business days for use to replace their hardware, IF we have 
> it in stock.  We don't stock much.  Normally I don't care but in this 
> case, they are selling their customers a service. 
> 

The thing to remember is who it is that is actually too cheap.  It
likely isn't the people within the IT department :).

I've worked in places where I've been able to spend money like it was
water.  I've worked in places where the money was very tight.  When the
money is tight you have to make trade offs.

If you're one guy with a limited budget you'll be thankful to have your
backups run and end up off-site on their own every day with no
intervention.

With today's prices you should be able to buy a pair of low end servers
with a terabyte or more of RAID 1 or 5 disk for about $1000.  That is
most likely enough space for something like rdiff-backup to keep a few
months worth of daily backups of 500GB on each server.

That could give you a local and off-site backup, assuming your company
has more than one location with connectivity of course :).

Pat

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