Tape drive alternative besides online backup for offsite backup
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4 drives in less than 3 years. When I was brought in backups were a big concern to them because the last guy did nightly backups to an external hard drive, but they discovered a quickbooks error and needed to go back a month. He was overwriting the backup every night, so they had nothing useful to work from.
I tried to talk them in to online backups, and eventually went for a USB tape drive because I needed something that work work through ESXi.
I'll have to see if the software will let me swap out USB drives with out re-configuring the backup job each time.
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It's purely security. It doesn't help my argument when things keep getting hacked.
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@aaron said in Tape drive alternative besides online backup for offsite backup:
@Mike-Davis said in Tape drive alternative besides online backup for offsite backup:
It's purely security. It doesn't help my argument when things keep getting hacked.
Probably already suggested to the client, but you could always encrypt before uploading. What if the offsite USB HDD storage is physically robbed? I know every datacenter I've been in has better security practices than my house. Not trying to derail the discussion about solving the issue, but I am starting to think the issue is the client and not technology
That was kind of a given from the beginning
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@aaron said in Tape drive alternative besides online backup for offsite backup:
@travisdh1 yeah, but I'd be closer to firing them rather than entertaining them
Where I work currently, I actually advocate for nothing online besides what has to be. Three letter government agencies aren't so fond of us, which makes life difficult.
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@aaron I told them what a pain tape drives were before I put it in and told them how much babysitting they need. They have to pay me every time I work on it, so they know.... They are otherwise a great client, so I'm not going to dump them for that.
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@Mike-Davis said in Tape drive alternative besides online backup for offsite backup:
@aaron I told them what a pain tape drives were before I put it in and told them how much babysitting they need. They have to pay me every time I work on it, so they know.... They are otherwise a great client, so I'm not going to dump them for that.
Tapes are high profit items for IT departments.
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@MattSpeller said in Tape drive alternative besides online backup for offsite backup:
@Dashrender said in Tape drive alternative besides online backup for offsite backup:
@Mike-Davis said in Tape drive alternative besides online backup for offsite backup:
@Dashrender said in Tape drive alternative besides online backup for offsite backup:
I suppose USB flash drives could be OK for Off-site. I'd get 5, one for each business day of the week. Then at work (hopefully) you would only loose one day if the current drive failed.
I'm doing grandfather - father - son backups, which is why the cost of them matter. I'll need like 15 just to get started.
@travisdh1 What software are you using?
@Breffni-Potter Site to site is out because that's "online" as far as they are concerned...
That's a tape mentality - do you need to maintain it? With the speed of USB 3 sticks, just do a full backup to a stick every day/night.
I never thought I would do this, but someone has to stand up for the tapes
Tape is cryptolocker proof.
Tape is "oops I brushed past the server and broke the USB stick off" proof
Tape media is really affordable per GB
Tape is designed to work with offsite storage for DR
... other tape goodness that someone else will remind me of I'm sureTapes aren't drop proof like a USB drive though.
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@MattSpeller said in Tape drive alternative besides online backup for offsite backup:
@travisdh1 said in Tape drive alternative besides online backup for offsite backup:
@MattSpeller said in Tape drive alternative besides online backup for offsite backup:
Sweet mother of god I had no idea anyone still used DAT160
How long a period did it take to kill 4 of them? Are you cleaning them regularly? Do you use fresh media every couple of years?
DAT80 was the thing when I first had to deal with tapes. They upgraded that to an LTO2 20 tape robot eventually.
Same here but we went to LTO3 dual head library with dual magazines! They are really a beautiful piece of engineering.
And not even that expensive. Last time I heard about DAT was like 15 years ago. We're using a 24 Slot Tandberg LTO-5 SAS 2U Lib (OEM'd Overland, like virtually everything else on the market) with single mag and single drive, enough for our environment at this point in time. Tape may be oldschool, but they're working like a charm.
Another option could be a VTL (virtual tape library). That's basically a translator between your backup software and an image file.
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@MattSpeller said in Tape drive alternative besides online backup for offsite backup:
@Dashrender said in Tape drive alternative besides online backup for offsite backup:
@Mike-Davis said in Tape drive alternative besides online backup for offsite backup:
@Dashrender said in Tape drive alternative besides online backup for offsite backup:
I suppose USB flash drives could be OK for Off-site. I'd get 5, one for each business day of the week. Then at work (hopefully) you would only loose one day if the current drive failed.
I'm doing grandfather - father - son backups, which is why the cost of them matter. I'll need like 15 just to get started.
@travisdh1 What software are you using?
@Breffni-Potter Site to site is out because that's "online" as far as they are concerned...
That's a tape mentality - do you need to maintain it? With the speed of USB 3 sticks, just do a full backup to a stick every day/night.
I never thought I would do this, but someone has to stand up for the tapes
Tape is cryptolocker proof.
Tape is "oops I brushed past the server and broke the USB stick off" proof
Tape media is really affordable per GB
Tape is designed to work with offsite storage for DR
... other tape goodness that someone else will remind me of I'm sureYou spend half your day waiting for restores.
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@momurda said in Tape drive alternative besides online backup for offsite backup:
@MattSpeller said in Tape drive alternative besides online backup for offsite backup:
@Dashrender said in Tape drive alternative besides online backup for offsite backup:
@Mike-Davis said in Tape drive alternative besides online backup for offsite backup:
@Dashrender said in Tape drive alternative besides online backup for offsite backup:
I suppose USB flash drives could be OK for Off-site. I'd get 5, one for each business day of the week. Then at work (hopefully) you would only loose one day if the current drive failed.
I'm doing grandfather - father - son backups, which is why the cost of them matter. I'll need like 15 just to get started.
@travisdh1 What software are you using?
@Breffni-Potter Site to site is out because that's "online" as far as they are concerned...
That's a tape mentality - do you need to maintain it? With the speed of USB 3 sticks, just do a full backup to a stick every day/night.
I never thought I would do this, but someone has to stand up for the tapes
Tape is cryptolocker proof.
Tape is "oops I brushed past the server and broke the USB stick off" proof
Tape media is really affordable per GB
Tape is designed to work with offsite storage for DR
... other tape goodness that someone else will remind me of I'm sureYou spend half your day waiting for restores.
But you will at least get them in case of a disaster. The normal process for tape is D2D2T, so tape is always a last resort. Day to day restore will most probably be from disk.
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@Mike-Davis said in Tape drive alternative besides online backup for offsite backup:
4 drives in less than 3 years. When I was brought in backups were a big concern to them because the last guy did nightly backups to an external hard drive, but they discovered a quickbooks error and needed to go back a month. He was overwriting the backup every night, so they had nothing useful to work from.
I tried to talk them in to online backups, and eventually went for a USB tape drive because I needed something that work work through ESXi.
I'll have to see if the software will let me swap out USB drives with out re-configuring the backup job each time.
You should take a look at StarWind's free Tape Redirector. Wrote something about that on my blog last month: https://www.windrath.com/2016/05/sas-tape-library-hyperv-vm-starwind-tape-redirector/.
There's also a current SW topic about that here: https://community.spiceworks.com/topic/1683645-got-a-new-lto-7-drive-now-what-back-up-nas?page=1#entry-5957833. @Kooler (StarWind) made a post there with quite some good info.
Basically, that's a piece of software that will virtually transport your local tape drive via iSCSI. Not sure if that works with USB drives, but it works rock solid and at wire speed for my Overland SAS drive. My backup software runs within a Hyper-V VM, tape drive is attached to one of my HV hosts. No PCIe passthrough available in my version of HyperV (2012R2).
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thwr thanks for reference!
Mike, yes, we can do that just fine! it's still recommended to do Disk-to-Disk-to-Tape however because direct iSCSI access for tape can be slow and backups may not fit into backup window. if it's a case VTL is your best friend
https://www.starwindsoftware.com/starwind-virtual-tape-library
Ping me if you'd have any questions so I could help.
