[ale] Prebuilt or assemble an off-site backup NAS box?

[JD]

On 05/06/2011 10:58 AM, Raj Wurttemberg wrote:
> I am looking to provide an off-site disaster recovery storage server for one
> of my clients. The box will be headless and run some flavor of Linux. They
> are currently running a Netgear ReadyNAS NVX which I have "tweaked" to allow
> SSH access (rsync works too). 
> 
> I priced out a new NAS from QNAP and it came out to about $1,100. I really
> like the QNAP box, but as little as it will be used I think I could build a
> small box and throw in some inexpensive SATA drives and get more bang for
> the buck.
> 
> Thoughts? Comments?


If you just want a backup storage for 1TB, get a $50 pogoplug and a
1.5TB USB drive. For backup storage, I don't see the point of RAID. If
you are hosting this almost anywhere, your ISP connection will be the
bottleneck, not the pogoplug (or similar).  There's a $200 solution
including the HDD.

You could have the backup "solution" on their internal network and push
backups nightly or weekly, then swap external USB/eSATA drive out every
week for off-site.  A BlackX eSATA dock
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/21FTNQOwAjL._SL500_AA300_.jpg can
work well too.  Still, under $200 including the HDD.

If you want something professional, outsource this to a commercial
backup provider with lots of bandwidth and next-day before 9am HDD
delivery if there is an issue.  Most serious providers will accept a
seed HDD to get most of the data there without wasting bandwidth. This
is likely to be $150/month.

Regardless, encrypt all the data before it leave the client site whether
it is walked out or transmitted.  Store the data encrypted.