Tell me about RAID and/or other backup solutions!

[sclitheroe]

Originally Posted by photon

Crashplan you could also do a peer to peer at a computer setup offsite just for that purpose.

I'm thinking more of the initial upload, 8TB is probably many many years worth of work, with my plan I get 500GB transfer, that's 1.3 years to upload

I guess you could get Shaw's Unlimited 250 which has 15Mbps upload and test their unlimited fine print, you could do 8TB in what, a couple of months? Lol...

You could just blow your quota and pay whatever penalty they want to assess you

Crashplan also has a seed service:
http://support.crashplan.com/doku.ph...e/seed_service

[photon]

Originally Posted by sclitheroe

You could just blow your quota and pay whatever penalty they want to assess you

Actually I think they're good about that stuff now, I think they just bump you up to the plan that you should be in for that billing period. At least I remember reading something like that when the whole overages storm was going on.

Originally Posted by sclitheroe

Crashplan also has a seed service:
http://support.crashplan.com/doku.ph...e/seed_service

Thanks, I was sure I'd seen stuff like that before.

[sclitheroe]

Originally Posted by photon

Actually I think they're good about that stuff now, I think they just bump you up to the plan that you should be in for that billing period. At least I remember reading something like that when the whole overages storm was going on.



Thanks, I was sure I'd seen stuff like that before.

It's only 1 TB of seeding that is available, but that is still a great head start, especially if you prioritize your backup selections.

I do like the idea of finding a trusted friend, and going in on a pair of Promise arrays to do the peer to peer component. That would be a great setup. I currently do this for some family relatives (one way only to my storage), and it's pretty solid.

[Rathji]

Originally Posted by Hack&Lube

What are you going to then? I just destroyed all our LT01s and LT02s and over 3000 DLTs but 3s and 4s are still viable. Doing that alone gave me thoughts of maybe being able to find surplus tapes and equipment from larger companies on the cheap.

We are moving to HDD + cloud based. The cost difference for the LTO 5 drive we required was quite substantial. Enough to pay for almost half the entire new server that just arrived today.

It isn't ideal, but in the end I am happy with what we will have. Sometimes doing IT for a non-profit is a totally different ballgame than my other clients. Its sometimes like juggling.

As for using tapes, I would never let someone have tapes that I had previously used as backup, but I am borderline obsessive about that kind of stuff.

[Table 5]

Hey guys….thanks for all the feedback here. After thinking about it a bit, and doing a little bit of research, I'm thinking of doing something like the following as a Backup strategy. Please let me know if it makes sense!

1. My main System and Work files will be on my iMac that I work on daily.
2. Copy of System and Work Files on a NAS at home. Backup daily with Time Machine.
3. Copy of Work Files and Archived Files off-site at my parents house on drives. Back up Monthly/Quarterly.

For #2 (and 3), I was thinking of getting either of the:
• Synology DS 1513+ http://www.synology.com/products/pro...513%2B&lang=us
• DS 412+ http://www.synology.com/products/pro...412%2B&lang=us.
I'm not 100% sure what the difference is between the 2, apart from one having 4 and one having 5 bays. Apart from space what is the advantage of having 5 disks instead of 4?

For #3 (offsite), I was looking at some of the cloud solutions, but I'm not sure how Im supposed to get 10TB of data to the cloud…that would take days/weeks etc to upload (and who knows how easy it is to recover). So I was thinking of keeping a physical copy at my parents place. My ideal scenario is that every month, I would be able to pop in a drive to the NAS, have it copy over, and then store the drive itself off-site at my parents. But I'm not sure if this is possible. If it's a 4 bay NAS, can I always keep 2 of the drives off-site, and then when I put them back in, have it update? I'd like to be able to Archive my work/photos somehow, and doing it onto drives seems like a decent solution, but Im not sure if this is how it works.

Does this make sense? Any thoughts are appreciated. Keep in mind, I'm not an IT guy, so dumb it down a shade.

[Table 5]

Btw, what is an SMB? I keep hearing about it, but Im not sure what it is exactly. Is it different than a NAS? If yes, how so?

[Rathji]

The solution for your off-site backup us Crashplan. You do the initial backup and then bring it to your parents house. Plug it into their PC and attach the backup. Then you just run the backup over the Internet to add new data to it. The main issue is it requires a PC to be on at their house all the time.

If that isn't possible, I would look into Carbonite . You would need to pay for the intial seed service, where they send you some hdds and you put your data in it and send it back to them. You are right about your intial backup taking a long time, but for 10 tb it might take a year plus, and given that I suspect this data is related to your work, you don't want to take that long.

[Table 5]

Originally Posted by Rathji

The solution for your off-site backup us Crashplan. You do the initial backup and then bring it to your parents house. Plug it into their PC and attach the backup. Then you just run the backup over the Internet to add new data to it. The main issue is it requires a PC to be on at their house all the time.

Hmm, so basically the NAS is stored at my parents instead of here? That could probably work, as my dad has his computer on all the time. He's looking for a backup solution as well, so I guess I could store his stuff here, ha.

My only concern is that I do have a lot of data that comes in big chunks. Ie, not unusual for me to have 500gb-1TB created from some big photo shoot. Updating that online would definitely take a while.

[Rathji]

That's a ton of data all at once

For reference, It takes about 9 days to upload 100 GB of data at 1mbps, which would likely be higher performance than you could likely expect.

Plus it would blow your bandwidth cap unless you are on an unlimited plan.

[Table 5]

Yeah, that's one reason why I was thinking of swapping out drives and just taking it off-site. I'd only like to do this once or twice a month, so it's not a huge deal.

I'm assuming I can directly connect the NAS to my computer though, so I dont have to do the local backups via wifi.

[Rathji]

If you are not doing network backups, you can save some cash and get a USB 3.0 enclosure.

http://www.memoryexpress.com/Products/MX39149

If you would like the option of using it on the network, you will have to get something like this, which has USB 3.0/esata support in addition to GB network.

http://www.memoryexpress.com/Products/MX45761

[Table 5]

So because I just needed to move on something, I ended up getting a Synology 1513+
http://www.synology.com/products/pro...513%2B&lang=us

Now I need to install the thing, which I'm a little unsure of.

In terms of creating volumes, is it better to make one big volume (ie, 4 or 5 disks), or create two 2-disk volumes. To be honest, I'm not 100% sure what the 5th drive is for though. Any ideas?

Also, to save some money, can i start off with 2 disks, and then when the time comes, just add 2/3 more. From what I've read, this Hybrid RAID that Synology has allows you to do that.

I haven't bought drives yet for this either. The Enterprise drives are basically twice the price (500 bucks) so Im not sure I want to shell out 2 grand right now just for that. Are the basic drives not good enough, considering that you have redundancy?

Would the Seagates be sufficient?
http://www.memoryexpress.com/Products/MX46058

[DownInFlames]

Originally Posted by Table 5

So because I just needed to move on something, I ended up getting a Synology 1513+
http://www.synology.com/products/pro...513%2B&lang=us

Now I need to install the thing, which I'm a little unsure of.

In terms of creating volumes, is it better to make one big volume (ie, 4 or 5 disks), or create two 2-disk volumes. To be honest, I'm not 100% sure what the 5th drive is for though. Any ideas?

Also, to save some money, can i start off with 2 disks, and then when the time comes, just add 2/3 more. From what I've read, this Hybrid RAID that Synology has allows you to do that.

I haven't bought drives yet for this either. The Enterprise drives are basically twice the price (500 bucks) so Im not sure I want to shell out 2 grand right now just for that. Are the basic drives not good enough, considering that you have redundancy?

Would the Seagates be sufficient?
http://www.memoryexpress.com/Products/MX46058

Congrats on the Synology purchase. I love mine. Just make one large volume unless you have need for separate ones. Go ahead and add drives as you need them. Keep in mind that at least one will be used for redundancy, and it'll be the largest one, so you might not end up with as much space as you figurered.

Anandtech did a good comparision of NAS drives, and it looks like they're pretty similar. I'd go with the Seagates since they're cheaper.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7258/b...as-hdd-faceoff

Check out SynoCommunity. They're a repository of apps so you can run stuff like bittorrent or sickbeard.

http://www.synocommunity.com/

[Table 5]

Cool, thank you. So if I start off with 2 now, maybe that's enough, and I'll buy some more as they become cheaper.

I guess I'm not sure why I was thinking about multiple volumes. I was thinking that one could be for my computer backup, and the other one for my wife's computer. But I assume you can have multiple Time Machines go onto the same Volume.

Btw, how did you initially copy your current files to the NAS? It seems like they want me to connect it to the router and do it through the network, but that would probably copy slower than connecting it with USB or something. I don't have the drives yet to see if it would work, but hopefully I can just do that to start off with.

[DownInFlames]

You can create one large volume and then make shared folders to keep stuff like backups and media separate. That's what I do.

I copied everything over the network overnight since I was using my desktop PC as my media server too. It's really nice not having that power-hungry beast running 24/7.