On line backups

[Bullett]

I was reading the thread about smugmug/amazon thingy. . .

 

As a hypothetical-type question, what if our IT guy is trying to talk our business into going to a fully on line back-up for our business system, is that a good idea or a bad idea? We currently use a two hard-drive deal with one off site at all times.

 

What are the advantages/disadvantages to full reliance on one or the other?

 

I can see that it is a PITA to make the hard drive backups and the online backup is "automatic," but what other things should we, assuming that we are considering this option, question out IT guy about?

[Francois_Dumas]

As a former IT exec and among many other things responsible for the back-up policies in over 42 countries, I would say that's a Big No-No. At least, if he's considering to ONLY put your data on a third-party server 'somewhere' on the Internet.

 

I don't know how large you company is, but large or small, I personally would ALWAYS recommend to keep control over your own data AND to have a double back-up. One on-site, another off-site (THAT could be his Internet backup copy).

 

Back-ups have a tendency to FAIL, you see !

 

In Europe there is another issue..... that of data confidentiality and accountability. In some countries you are not even allowed to store the data 'across the border' just like that !

 

As for the back-up technology...... if he can do an 'automatic backup' over the Internet, nothing is to stop him from having an automatic back-up done onto his own servers or another PC or disk-array. There are plenty of programs that will let you do that.

 

Putting all your eggs in one basket is simply not done in any business because it could mean 'suicide'.

 

If you want to know more, please PM me.

 

Kind regards,

Francois

[bakerzdosen]

Well, it really depends on how much data you're talking about and what kind of internet connection you have. A lotta people use the "Chevy Truck" backup method by just taking tapes off-site (yup - even home) at night. It works and gets the info off site. The obvious disadvantage is that there is human interaction and thus is prone to failure (eg. someone forgets, gets sick or is on vacation etc.)

 

If you're talking about, say, more than 5GB of data, that's the easiest way to go. See, you will eventually reach a point where you're limited by how much bandwidth you've got. If you've got a T1 line doing nothing else, and assuming you saturate the line for 10 hours every night, you'll only be uploading about 5GB. If you have a 10Mbps connection that you can saturate, you'd get around 35GB in that timeframe.

 

For those of us who back up 200GB or more every night, online backups just aren't feasible.

 

So, assuming that you're talking about the amount of data that would work for online backups, the next question is "is it worth it?" And the answer will depend on a few things:

 

How critical are your business systems and your data? Can you live without them for a few hours while you download the backup from your online backups? Obviously, online backups shouldn't be your primary backup unless you can do without your data for the amount of time that it's going to take to reacquire it. For example, all of our customers dump their databases to disk, and then spool them off to tape. Why? Well, that disk backup goes a LOT faster than to tape, and restoring a 1TB database is murder, so you want to give yourself every advantage you can - especially when you've got 300 or so users waiting for that database so they can do their job(s). The tapes are there in case the clustered servers fail, and the replicated databases fail, and then the backup disks fail. Do most people need that kind of redundancy? No way. But waiting for hundreds of gigabytes of data to download over the internet just won't cut it to put out a newspaper, so many of our customers tend to have a disaster recovery site where they essentially do their own off-site backup (up to the minute through rather "fat pipes" of internet connectivity) at some "bunker" away from the main office.

 

But, if you only access a small subset of data, online backups might just be ideal for some of that really critical data that you have to backup and allows you to be prepared for a "disaster." Just realize that they probably shouldn't be your first and only line of defense. You should have some other backups as well just in case.

 

So, in summary. If you've got just a small amount of data and a decent connection to the internet, go for it. If not, it's probably not going to suit your needs.

[Bullett]

Thanks Francois and Matt for your insight and suggestions. I will get more information about what exactly the IT guy is suggesting and may ask you additional questions at that point.

 

One think I have learned since I left the government is that I sometimes don't know the right questions to ask our hired experts. Although my partners are brilliant people, none of us are particularly technology savvy, but I am trying to learn and understand these new issues as they come up.

[Francois_Dumas]

Don't be afraid to ask.... there's lots of knowledge around here and no need to reinvent 20 year old wheels anymore

[Jerry Johnston]

Many small companies do exactly what your company is doing. As Francois sid I wouldn't compromise security by saving on line.